Several things Tuesday

Meant to do a "Six Things Saturday" post... then a "Six Things Sunday" post... obviously it never happened.

Here's the quick update/rundown:

1. Bad news - I think we might be replacing the countertops in our kitchen. We need to do it before we sell this house (maybe 4-5 years down the line), and I certainly do not want to be doing it with a newborn and a toddler, and we don't really want to do it right before we sell - would be nice to enjoy it for awhile - so it looks like now is the time. I'm getting bids and getting overwhelmed with the thought of not having a kitchen or dishwasher for three weeks. We're also considering biting the bullet and getting the rest of the house painted at the same time since we're planning to paint New Baby's nursery soon (indoor - we've painted about half of it ourselves but the other half is still the beige it was when we moved in). If the place is going to be unlivable for a few weeks, maybe we should just go all-out. Again - overwhelmed.

2. Good news - I think we've settled on a name for New Baby! Finally. We're not monograming anything yet but for the first time I'm actually happy with her name. It actually makes her feel more real, which is a pleasant bonus.

3. Bad news - Also overwhelming is the search for a preschool or Mother's Day Out program for this fall. We're doing perfectly fine now, but I know Julia is going to want more stimulation that I'm probably going to be able to provide for her with an infant in the house. So we're looking at options ranging from once-a-week for-a-few-hours care to all-out preschool. I have no idea what's going to be the best option for her so I'm looking at everything, basically. The worst part is how crazy expensive it all is! Holy cow people - you're just watching toddlers... I know that's insulting to all early childhood educators but what on earth are you doing with all that money that could possibly make a difference to a 2-year-old? She's just as happy playing with rocks as with your fancy wooden organic free-range Montessori-approved-and-accredited toys. Just keep her safe and happy for a few hours for me, and don't charge a fortune, k?

4. Good news - Julia's rash has been doing so well that we're back into cloth diapers about half the time. I'm gradually easing us through the transition, watching for signs of reoccurrence but none so far. It's awesome to have a rash-free baby. She's happy, I'm happy, woohoo! She's also twice used her little potty successfully in the last couple days. I'm not crazy and trying to potty train her now, but she always pees when she gets in the tub, and she loves sitting on her potty in the bathroom anyways, so we put her on it before her bath. So far we're at about 50% getting her to go in the potty vs the tub. She knows what's going on so I figure it can't hurt to get her used to the idea.

5. Bad news - I read book one of the Hunger Games this past weekend. I was pretty much obsessed with it for the waking hours between when I started it and finished it. I desperately want to get the next two books but I'm afraid of getting sucked in for another weekend. (S - have you started yours yet? You have to!)

6. Good news - The weather has been relatively nice here lately so we squeezed in another nice park session today before the sun went down. I can't convey how thankful I am that we've had such a mild winter so far. It gets me so depressed anyways, the cold and the indoors and the dark and the longing for lazy, hot, long summer days, that it's been just amazing to be able to get out as much as we have been lately.

So, without further news, here are the pics:

Surveying the new playground.

Quickly became obsessed with the gravel.

Concentrating on staring at other children.

Both my kiddos. <3
(You wanted a belly shot? There's a belly shot.)

More socially-inappropriate wistful staring at other children.

Finally - she figured out how to go down a slide without hurting herself!

Yeah we need a close-up on that grin.

And, my favorite photo of the bunch. My view for most of the day - Little J disappearing around a corner.

Five Things Friday

1. We saw the pediatric dermatologist today. It wasn't near as helpful as I'd hoped it'd be, but honestly I wasn't too surprised. To recap: Julia has had an off-and-on yeast diaper rash for about the past four months. We've tried all sorts of OTC anti-fungal creams, tea tree oil, vinegar in the bathtub, different types of disposable diapers, wool cloth diaper covers, daily baths, tea tree oil, nystatin (prescription anti-fungal), and lots of diaper-free time, and nothing has eliminated it. The ped derm had a few main points, for those interested:

• Don't use commercial wipes; use water and paper towels instead. We haven't and don't use commercial wipes, so this was pretty moot.
• Disposable diapers are better for keeping a baby rash-free than cloth. I think I disagree with her here. She backed up this assertion by talking about a study she helped design for Proctor & Gamble twenty years ago. I respectfully submit that both cloth and disposable diapers have changed a lot since then. Regardless, Julia's been in disposables (with the exception of the cloth/wool diaper covers experiment) since this rash started, since the anti-fungals are bad for the cloth diapers. 
• Our game plan now is: Put 1% hydrocortisone on the diaper area on top of the anti-fungal medicine. Do this for every diaper change when the rash is bad, about three times a day when it's there but not bad, and once a day when it's pretty much all cleared up. This doctor prefers miconazole, sold as Micatin. I'll probably use up the nystatin that we already have first. 
• The doctor also believes that all the other stuff we've been trying is probably unnecessary. I concur with the exception of the diaper-free time. I've noticed a definite improvement in Julia's bum when she gets more diaper-free time, so as much as I'd like to believe the doctor that I don't really need to do that anymore, I'm going to keep it up. Right now, her rash isn't too bad so I feel like I have half a shot at eliminating it soon.
• This rash will be a fact of life until Julia potty trains. I know rashes are part of diapered babies, but the doctor didn't give me a lot of hope that it'll ever clear up. I said, "So you're telling me this is chronic?" She responded, "Oh no! It'll clear up. But it won't go away completely until she's potty trained." Okaaaaay.... Thaaaanks. Is she right? Do I resign myself? I don't know.

Anyways, I'm glad we went just so I know there's not anything else I should be doing, but I'm frustrated that I was basically told to learn to live with this. I also want to get back to our cloth diapers so I'm frustrated by our conversation about those versus disposables. I'm going to have to do some experimenting and sleeping on it to figure out what we're going to do long-term.

And, again, I'm so eternally grateful that Julia is so healthy. We went to Children's (hospital) for this appointment, and I saw SO many babies hooked up to IV's and tubes. There is just nothing sadder than a tiny bald child being pushed around in a brightly-colored wagon with attached IV poles.

2. I am beat. I barely got through today without biting someone's head off and I'm going to bed as soon as this posts. Julia's sleep has been slowly but surely deteriorating this week and I haven't had a good night's rest in awhile (not helped by needing to get up and go to the bathroom 78613409 times a night). I suspect we're at the very beginnings of a "dropping the morning nap" transition and it's affecting her night sleep and her daily schedule. Just have to wait it out and see how this plays out.

3. I saw two people I used to work with today. It made me question (again) what the heck I'm doing with myself. Everyone I graduated with - from both college and law school - is moving along nicely in their careers and learning and getting more experience and getting better and better at what they do. I've just learned to be a really good babysitter.

4. It looks like we're not doing much (well, nothing so far) in the way of Christmas decorating this year. We just have too much other house stuff that's a higher priority; we can't spend 2+ weekends putting up/down Christmas decorations because there's just so much other stuff to do.... and that stuff is kind of on a tight timeline because we need to make a nursery for this new baby by the end of April. It makes me sad, though. I love colored lights and pine things and candy canes and sparkly useless pretty things on my table tops and mantel. And of course it makes the cold weather festive instead of just dreary, and come end of February I'm going to really be wishing I had taken advantage of the festivities.

5. Maybe I ought to rename this "Four Things Friday" because I just can't think of anything else. This post has kind of turned into a pity-party anyways so maybe it's best I wrap it up. Here are a few cute pics of Julia to redeem things a bit:

Adventures in cloth diapering and a sick baby update

A diaper rash pretty much comes with the territory when a baby's been having as many GI issues as Julia has been. She's had a yeast diaper rash for awhile now. Like, two months awhile, not two weeks awhile. And I've been doing a pretty good job keeping up with it, but I just can't get ahead of it.

Having diaper-free time seems to be the #1 way to make her tush get better, but now that the weather isn't so great for it outside, and it's even pretty chilly inside the house, it's tough to let her run around half-naked. Plus there's the obvious "well what if she goes to the bathroom on something?!" 

So... enter cloth prefolds and wool diaper covers. I already had a bunch of prefolds since I was using them as burpcloths, and I already had some diaper pins because I was using them for decorations other things in the nursery. And after much research, the internet convinced me that wool diaper covers are completely magical and the absolute best in breathability. After I got over my initial disappointment in our local store's selection (the selection was fine, I just wanted a prettier color) (I promised myself that if we do this regularly I'll go get something adorable off of Etsy), I forked over the $30 for a wool diaper cover. 

We tried them out today. They are much softer than I expected wool would be and I'm even coming around and thinking they're kind of cute. The major disadvantage is that you need to change them more frequently than even regular cloth pocket diapers. As soon as baby pees once, it's time for a change, which can get annoying when you have a super-water-drinker like J. Another disadvantage is that the cotton prefolds underneath them are hard to get right, although that's hopefully user error and something that'll improve over time as I get better with them. 

Her tush doesn't really look any better tonight, but I'm going to try to spend some time each day with these, around the house, and see if that doesn't help out with the rash. I hear some people use them for overnight, and I can see how using a more breathable fabric for 10 hours a day could really help with keeping rash to a minimum. If this goes well, I'm going to look into wool longies (basically a diaper cover in the shape of pants so I can use them as pajama bottoms) (also super-duper cute) (also super-duper expensive).

I mean, you can't tell me that's not kind of cute.

On the GI issues front, Julia has been doing much better today. She's been eating much better, her body temp is better, and things are looking better overall. Her sleep is worse - and she's consequently still been a little cranky - since we've been back home but we'll keep working on that. If she's physically feeling better, the rest will fall into place much more easily.

I know! That's how I feel too, JJ!

I'm not sure if it was the milk, or maybe just two viruses back-to-back, but either way, I'm trying to resist going back to her normal schedule and diet RIGHT AWAY RIGHT NOW, which is freaking me out because I'm worried she's going to be taking formula from a bottle for most of her nutrition from now until when she starts first grade at this rate. But, I'm resisting my urge to freak out and planning to wait a week or two and then slowly reintroduce the foods we cut out (mostly dairy, for those interested). We'll also see what the pedi has to say on Monday about this whole thing. I'm assuming she's not going to tell me anything I don't already know but that's probably a little unfair of me.

Anyways, we're having a nice, low-key weekend. R and I got out for a solo dinner for the first time in a long long time, and it was really nice. We need to do that more often. We're starting to make our holiday plans and it's kind of exciting - Julia obviously will be way more into the holidays this year than last year, and I'm also calmer because I feel a lot more secure about handling a baby and holiday shopping, cards, etc. We're going to blink and it's going to be spring! Until then, I have many much things to do.

Hope everyone else is having a nice weekend too!

Cloth Diapers

So, we've been doing cloth diapers for a few months now, and while I'm certainly no expert on every aspect of them, I've gotten us set up and a system going that's totally working for us. I've had a few friends ask about them so I figured I'd put together a post with all the info I can think of.


Cloth Diapers Themselves


Trying to figure out what type of diapers to buy was daunting at first. There are All-in-Ones (AIO) and pockets; AIO's are literally one piece of diaper with the absorbent material sewn to the cover, while pocket diapers have a cover and a slit into which you stuff absorbent pads. There are one-size and sized; one-size diapers typically have snaps down the front so you can adjust the rise as Baby grows, while sized are just that - designed for a certain weight range. There are velcro tabs and snap tabs. There's the Flip system and the G Diaper system, both of which have their own idiosyncrasies. And then once you get past all of that, there are a billion different brands out there.


I bought up several different types of diapers before Julia was born. I bought most of them used, off of Craigslist, and picked up a few new ones here and there. We tried BumGenius (a very popular brand, especially locally), FuzziBunz, Rumparooz, Happy Heinies, Kangas, Kushies, and G Diapers. That's certainly not an exhaustive list of available brands, but I tried to cover off on the more highly-rated and more popular ones. In there, a few were AIO's although most were pocket diapers, most were one-size but a few were sized, and they were about half and half snaps vs velcro. Then, I planned to resell the types we didn't like as much (there's a vibrant secondhand market for well-maintained CDs) and purchase more of the ones we liked the best. An advantage to this system vs buying new was that I could see how well the diapers behaved even after they had been used for awhile.


We used disposable diapers for about the first 2-3 months. Even the one-sized diapers seemed HUGE on my newborn, and I was just trying to get through the days (and nights), meaning I totally didn't have the energy to set up a CD system then. But, when Julia was just shy of three months (and she was about 10 pounds), we made the switch. I wouldn't do that any differently if I had to go back and do it again.


Just for reference, Julia is a pretty average sized baby. She's been right in the 40%-60% range for height and weight since birth.


Pretty early on, I nixed the AIO's. Since the absorbent pad was sewn into the cover, and the cover could only be line-dried or dried in the dryer on low, they took FOR.EV.ER to dry. Like, a day and a half. I couldn't imagine having a set of diapers that required that much time for a cleaning cycle. Stuffing the pocket diapers takes about the same amount of time as opening up and stretching a disposable diaper, so even though I thought they'd be more work, it's totally not a big deal.


I wanted to like the velcro tabs, but I just couldn't. The velcro diapers have a little tab that you stick the velcro to for washing, but after awhile, the velcro sort of pulls back and ends up sticking to other diapers and wipes in the wash. The gripe with snaps is that most diapers have a row of snaps across the front of the diaper, but it's tough to remember which ones to use for the right fit, so you end up snapping one side, snapping the other, unsnapping the first side, and going back and forth a bit.  But, even though they're a little faster than snaps and a little more adjustable, it just felt like every time I opened the washing machine with a load of velcro diapers, there was a giant chain of diapers velcroed together and I was damaging them every time I pulled them apart.

See the velcro tabs pulling away? They look innocent, don't they?
Don't be fooled. They go mad destructive in the washing machine.

I also didn't realize how quickly Julia would grow into the one-sized diapers. I disliked them at first because – pretty obviously – all the extra material taken up in the front snaps made them pretty bulky and a little more leak-prone. But, Julia quickly moved through the snaps and by now – at 14 pounds and 5 months – we don’t use any of the front snaps, i.e. she’s in the diapers at their largest. Maybe I’m using them wrong or something, because this surprised me, but it was a pleasant surprise. The front snaps are just a short-lived thing.


However, we ended up purchasing FuzziBunz: sized, pocket diapers with snaps. FuzziBunz snap design eliminated the back-and-forth snap size issue since it's clear where the middle is, so that solved that issue for us. The medium FuzziBunz diapers fit 15-30 pounds, although we started using them on Julia at about 14 pounds and it's been fine. We're hoping we'll be into training pants or something by the time she's 30 pounds, although now that I've made that public I'm sure I've jinxed myself. I liked their simplicity, and the fact that the diaper covers don't stain. Other than Rumparooz, all the other diaper covers would stain, and my Rumparooz and FuzziBunz would come out totally clean every time. I know they say the stains come out in the sunshine, but I started this process in winter and seriously did not want to be putting loads of diapers outside to de-stain when there were brands out there that didn't stain in the first place.

Left to right - BumGenius (stains), Kushies (stains), FuzziBunz (no stains!)

So, I picked up 24 brand spanking new "gender neutral" diapers off of Amazon. Then I was sad that they weren't girly enough so I grabbed another 10 pink ones off of eBay. This has been way plenty enough diapers to do laundry every few days. They all come with a microfiber insert (sort of like a washcloth material), but I also picked up about 8 hemp inserts. Microfiber absorbs more quickly so will keep Baby's skin dry better, but hemp absorbs more liquid total, so the hemp ones are good for layering.


Washing


We have a front-loading, high-efficiency washer and dryer. I wash about every two days, maybe closer to every three. The diapers go into a Planet Wise hanging cloth bag that hangs on our door handle in the bathroom. We wash our hands after every diaper change, so it's easy to de-stuff the diaper and toss it in the bag since we're in the bathroom anyways. We got a diaper sprayer but honestly haven't used it much yet. Julia is still exclusively breastfed, so all poopy diapers go straight into the washer. I've tried out the sprayer a few times and don't love it yet (probably because the first time I had it backwards and it went right into my eye) but I know it'll get more use once she starts solid foods.

Just hangin' in the bathroom...

Bein' useful...

So, when the bag is full, I toss the contents into the washer. I do a cold soak (30 min), two cold rinses on low (30 min total) (on low to not spin out all the water in the inserts - since they absorb so much water I don't want them soaking up all the water during the following wash), toss in the bag, and run a hot wash (Whitest Whites on my machine) with 1/2 a load's worth of Country Save detergent. If the load is closer to three days old, I'll sometimes do a second Whitest Whites without detergent.


Then, inserts and wipes go in the dryer on Normal, while the covers get hung on a rack in the laundry room. The covers are dry by morning if I hang them the night before, so I usually do laundry in the evenings. The hemp liners take awhile to dry but I just dry them with the rest of the inserts then pull them out and let them hang for a night with the covers.


Then, before I wash any of our other household laundry, I run a bleach cycle on our washer. It's a secret cycle that's initiated by a certain combo of buttons on the machine; the code is in the user manual. It takes 1/3 cup bleach and washes out the inside of the machine. Even though the internet swears that washing cloth diapers at home isn't unsanitary, it makes us feel a lot better about washing poopy diapers in the same machine in which we wash our clothes. The existence of this bleach cycle was probably was the one single thing that sold us on the whole cloth diaper experience.


Wipes and Outings and Overnights

It’s a no-brainer to use cloth wipes if you’re using cloth diapers. I think they’re definitely easier to deal with and more effective at getting messes than disposables. I’ve bought BumGenius Egyptian cotton wipes (hated them – so stiff), a pack of generic flannel wipes (nice), and cheap-o baby washcloths (also nice). I fold them so they pull up like regular wipes and put them in our wipes warmer. I add a cup of water with some aloe, vitamin e, and tea tree oil/lavender for scent (no magic formula here – just what I liked at Whole Foods).

Pretty adorable, huh? I get some crazy pleasure out of a nicely folded stack of wipes.

When we go out for a few hours, we use cloth diapers just as easily as disposables. The only difference is, I add a wet/dry bag to the diaper bag. It has the waterproof liner just like the bag we hang in the bathroom, and I put dirty diapers in there to deal with when I get home. (Bonus - you'll be happy to have it for the clothes too if Baby has a blowout.) Then it's easy when I get home; I just dump it all in the bathroom bag and it gets washed like normal.

We go back and forth on what we do for overnight. Sometimes we do disposables, sometimes we do two hemp inserts in the cloth, but what seems to be working best is a combo. We use a cloth diaper and stuff it with a microfiber insert, a hemp insert, and the center of a disposable diaper that I've cut away from the sides and tabs. Right now that seems to be keeping her dry without adding an unmanageable amount of bulk. I don't really have this down yet and I'm going to keep experimenting.

Conclusion

They're really not any more work than disposables, now that we're set up. There's definitely a heavy upfront investment, both in time and money. We probably spent $600 for the diapers, wipes, and bags, and it took awhile to get into a rhythm with the washing and all. But now we save the $80/month we were spending on disposable diapers, plus all the time we were spending on Walmart diaper runs. And, we plan to cloth diaper a second child too, for whom all that upfront cost will be negligible. (Although we'll do disposables for the newborn stage again for the same reasons we did it this time.)

Julia doesn't seem to have any more or less diaper rash with the cloth diapers, and when she does get a rash, we switch to disposables for a few hours to use Desitin to clear it up. (Do NOT use most conventional diaper rash creams with cloth diapers - they'll make the whole load smell like two-day-old dead fish. Seriously. Gross. Then you'll spend a day googling "stripping cloth diapers" and doing lots and lots of washes.) We also use disposables on long trips and when Julia goes to her grandparents' houses. But, we have WAY fewer blowouts with the cloth. It's worth doing cloth diapers just to avoid doing an outfit change with every poopy diaper and a load of poopy clothes every day. Maybe it's something that just breastfed babies do a lot, but that really makes it worth it for us.

Overall, we're really happy. Questions? Did I leave anything out of this Longest Post Ever? Let me know!