Sabbatical?

Apparently I tried to pull the whole PhD card and take a sabbatical from the blog.  In my defense, my family was down from NJ, and it would have been quite rude of me to tell them to wait while I blogged.  I was so excited to have them down and for them to interact with C, since he's changed so much since they were last down in March.  He's definitely a lot more fun now!  It feels weird to talk about my family in the post since my mom's pretty much my only regular reader.  Hi Mom!  They got to be here for C's 6 month birthday and experience his first time eating solids.  He was a pro!

Anywho, it's been the same old, same old.  Weeks that pass by slowly and weekends that breeze by.  C did get to finally use the first baby-related item I bought when I found out I was pregnant:

Today's S's birthday, and we didn't really do anything too exciting.  My gifts bombed.  In my defense, he's really difficult to buy for, and he tends to buy what he needs when he needs it.  To top off the day, the poor guy had to mow the lawn.  I offered to do it, but I think he knew it would take him a lot less time.  Note to self: next year, buy him the services of a lawn mowing company.

While S was mowing, C helped me fold diapers.  Then he made a move to snuggle with them.

Am I the only one that thinks it's harder to stick by the rules as a baby gets older and cuter?  We've been so good about just putting him down to bed, but lately he's fussed a bit, especially at naps.  I think he's really starting to go through separation anxiety.  Anyway, on the weekends, I like lying down with him on our bed, and he invariably falls asleep.  He's so cute!

Okay, next topic needs to be about my assessment of the variety of types of cloth diapers I have.  If I put it in the blog, in the words of Chris Farley as Guliani's son, "it should be so, and it will be so!"

Traveling with Cloth/Our Trip to Cincinnati/Stripping (Diapers, You Perv)

A couple of weeks ago, we went up to Cincinnati (does it take anyone else multiple times to spell "Cincinnati?") for a few days and packed a ton of cloth diapers.

Since I didn't want dirty diapers sitting around and stinking up the joint, I put C in a disposable while I did a load of laundry. Strangely enough, it took me a few times to get the disposable on properly. I guess it's been a while.

Our first night we stayed at a (nice) traditional hotel.  Unfortunately, the one room deal was not really cutting it.  We brought a Pack and Play, and we had to put it right outside of the bathroom, which equaled the foot of the bed.

Oh, hello, MySpace-style photo. 

 

C slept well (thankfully, he slept well all trip), but since he's been sleeping in his own room since day 2 without a monitor, I had forgotten how much noise he makes in his sleep.  Sneezes, coughs, sighs, and grunts meant S and I didn't sleep well.  The bed was pretty uncomfortable too.  Lesson learned - there's only so much you can find out about a hotel on the interwebz.  S got up at 4am (!!!) to go look at other area hotels.  We ended up transferring to the Residence Inn in northern Cincinnati, and we LOVED it.  C had his own room, and it had its own ridiculously comfortable bed on the off-chance that S snored.  

The first day in our new digs, we went to the Newport Aquarium.  We took C through in his stroller, and he, to our amazement, was looking at everything.  

He had the cutest outfit for the day:

The next day, we went to the zoo, and S carried C around in a carrier.  He was such a trooper, and S and I felt like we nailed it parent-wise, because I fed him and we changed his cloth diaper in public without a hitch.  I used my Hooter Hiders to keep things discreet.  

Then it was off to the museum after a happy morning:

C wasn't a really big fan of the museum - I think there weren't enough moving things.  It was a pretty cool museum, though.  We went on a replica steam boat, and an old man dressed up in old-fashioned clothing came on it with us.  Well, I didn't realize he was a real person at first, since they had a lot of mannequins around.  So I had a really awkward moment where I tried to recover from jumping at the realization that he was alive, and I said "hello..." the same way Sophia does on this episode of the Golden Girls (around 21:00): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpTkeqxoUNo

Then he decided to make conversation IN CHARACTER.  I'm terrible at that stuff.  He responded with some dated colloquialism when I asked him how he was.  And then he asked me if I were "going downriver."  Again, I'm terrible with that whole "it's 1865" stuff.  For goodness sake, I was just checking Facebook on my iPhone.  Get with it, dude.  Well I responded, "I'm not sure.  I'm not very good with directions."  Then booked it to the bow of the boat where S was.  Then S had to strike up a conversation with the guy while I just TRIED TO LIVE IN THE PRESENT.  This is why I don't talk to strangers.  The South would do well to learn that lesson.  

Now on to diapering on the trip.  It actually went really well, or at least that was my perspective right after we got home.  I brought all the small zippered wet bags we have (4 - 2 from Go Green Diapers - love these, especially for the price - and 2 from Swaddlebees, which are so cute.  We have the owls and the dinos).  I used those as smaller time bombs as opposed to one large bag with all the diapers fermenting together.  When we got home, I did a major wash using the sanitize cycle and extra pre- and post-rinsings.  And I thought all was well, and was thrilled that we didn't use disposables.

Now that we're a couple of weeks out, I'm still thrilled that we didn't need to use disposables, and honestly didn't feel like we needed to, but I should have washed the diapers mid-trip.  I think letting them sit and fester for several days gave them the ammonia stinkies, which made for a heck of a time getting rid of it via the stripping process, as it is commonly referred to in cloth diapering circles.  I tried soaking a load in ~1/4 cup of Bac-Out (which I love and spray on poopy diapers).  I only did it for a few hours, and the bottle recommends overnight.  That didn't seem to do it, so I tried overnight.  I wanted to sun the diapers, but my schedule and the weather didn't really work for that, so there went my tried-and-true method.  I finally did a bleach load of the inserts and diapers that are "approved" for it, like Bum Genius, and I'm hoping that's the ultimate fix.  So far so good.  Not such a fun process though.  Apparently I'm a terrible stripper, but you probably already knew that.

Wash Day for Cloth Diapers

Washing cloth diapers was something I spent way too much time researching.  I started out thinking that having an HE front loader would be a major help with diapers.  Well, it turns out that HE washers are not as great as older washers, because they don't use as much water.  Great - the perk of HE washers for my utility bills is its downfall for diapers.  To make matters more complicated, different washers have such a variety of wash settings.

Wash day is usually triggered by one of two things: out of diapers for day care (aka minimally stained velcro diapers) or the diaper pail stinks to high heaven.  Our "diaper pail" is actually a step trash can lined with a Wahmies pail liner that can be washed with the diapers.  Since we still use disposable wipes much of the time, we actually have a trash bag in half of the pail.

Yes, I'm literally putting my dirty laundry on the interwebz

I make sure velcro is on the laundry tabs (it's not a guarantee from the day care, but hey - they're using cloth, so I can't complain) and remove inserts if need be.  I've found that my BumGenius, Ones  & Twos, and nighttime megastuffed diapers don't unstuff in the wash.

Clearly I'm a professional photographer

When it's time to wash diapers, I take the whole bag o' diapers down to our laundry room and dump them all in the washer.  We have a Samsung WF350, which has a spin and rinse cycle.  I turn on the spin and rinse on cold and "no spin," which I guess then just technically makes it a rinse cycle.  My thinking behind the no spin is to get some water in the diapers to a) help rinse out what's in the diapers and b) increase the weight for the next cycle so it'll have more water too.  I don't use any detergent for this cycle.

Once the rinse and spin is done (it takes 9 minutes), I use the heavy duty cycle on warm/cold (and sometimes hot/cold depending on how bold I'm feeling).  I use a scoop of Charlie's soap in the wash.  The heavy duty cycle takes like 2 hours.  Oy.  Once it's done, that's it for washing.

I either put the diapers in the dryer on low using the timer setting (the sensor always thinks they're dry before they really are) or put them out on the line.  Any stains that have persisted through the wash cycle (there seem to be more since C started on vitamins, but I could just be imagining that's the cause) have always disappeared in the sun.

The best piece of advice I've ever heard about wash routines is once you find one that works, stick with it.  I have been tempted by the siren song of other detergents or others' wash routines, but then I remember how easy mine is and how well it works for me and my washer and my water type and all those other variables that come into play.  I know it's perverse, but I kind of love diaper laundry.

My Favorite Cloth Diapers

Hands down, my favorite diapers are Tots Bots Easyfits.  They're one size, so C can wear them until he starts popping a squat on the toilet.  They're a hybrid of a pocket diaper and an all-in-one, in that the liner is sewn in, but it agitates out in the wash.  They're sooo soft, and we've yet to have a leak.  And the icing on the cake is that they're easy as all get out to use.  They're the diapers that I primarily send to day care and the ones that S gravitates toward.  I tend to use them less so that they're available for day care and S, but then I saw that Diaper Junction is giving away 2 of the NEW Tots Bots.  I'm seriously so excited about the new Tots Bots.  They are so cute, and many of the patterns are based on fairy tales, like the 3 Little Pigs and Chicken Little.  Adorbs.

I Love Modern (Diaper) Technology

Many CDing parents are taking part in the Flats Challenge this week - using old-school flat diapers and washing them by hand.  As gung-ho as I am about cloth diapering (which is pretty gung-ho; I've been having to do a lot of middle-of-the-night bedding and baby changes in the quest for a good nighttime cloth solution.  More on that later...), I passed on the challenge.  Personally, I'd much rather use my Tots Bots and HE washer.  I feel sorry for parents of yesteryear who had no choice but old-school cloth.  I'll still keep using my Amish-style clothesline, though.

Time Flies When You're Sleep-Deprived

Today I looked down at C while I was feeding him, and tears welled up so quickly that my eyes hurt.  It wasn't that long ago that we saw the little embryo we didn't think would be there:

Then he became Cletus the Fetus:

And entered this world as an almost stranger to us:

Now he's the love of our lives and totally looks like a big boy:

 I can't imagine how I'll feel when he's a toddler, or a tween, or a teenager.  I'm sure future-self will laugh at the naivete of present-self and how little perspective I have on the passage of time.

It's kind of like how Fatty went from this:

To this:

I guess some people dogs just get creepier with age...

Dealing with Infertility at the Ripe Old Age of 25

We tried for over a year and a half before getting pregnant. I never would have imagined that I'd have trouble getting pregnant. After all, sex ed teaches you that "it only takes one time." Plus infertility is reserved for older parents, right?  Clearly, I was wrong.

I've wanted to be a mom for as long as I can remember.  I always thought the actual parenting would be difficult, not just getting pregnant.  I think it started getting frustrating at about 6 months of trying.  And by "frustrated," I mean that it was pretty much all I could think about, and I ended up getting really depressed.  About 9 months in, I went to see a doctor for an unrelated issue, and mentioned that we were trying to conceive unsuccessfully (okay, I'm already getting irritated with the terminology...).  Since my insurance coverage was about to change and a specialist visit would go from being free to having a 10% coinsurance, my doctor referred me asap to a reproductive endocrinologist who gave me a workup.  He even referred to a speculum as a crowbar.  Yessss.  Everything went well, but he mentioned offhandedly that I had a pretty sweet goiter.

Yet another misconception that I had - that goiters were issues related to developing countries.  You have first world issues?  That's cute.  I have third world issues.

I had a whole thyroid workup, and while my TSH was normal, my antibodies were super high.  Like off the charts.  But both my primary care doctor and the reproductive endocrinologist said that even though I have something called Hashimoto's thyroiditis, I should just sit and wait.  The reproductive endocrinologist explained it thusly: I should just sit and wait while my body attacks my thyroid, and when it degrades enough that it effects my TSH levels, then I could be treated.  Did I mention that my hair was falling out, I was gaining weight in spite of exercising more than I had been, I felt constantly worn down, and I HAD A GOITER?

Well guess who went directly to PubMed to find info about Hashimoto's?  The same person who has no patience for sitting and waiting, that's who.  And it turns out that Hashimoto's has a pretty decent link with not getting knocked up.  Some studies showed treating the symptoms rather than the TSH levels reversed the infertility.  But my doctor still refused to treat me.  So I went to a nurse practitioner who looked up the studies, called endocrinologists to make sure the Synthroid used to treat the symptoms wouldn't have adverse effects, and decided to prescribe me Synthroid.  I am so grateful to her, since I felt like I was slamming up against a brick wall - like I had found my answer, but no one was listening.

We luckily had a happy ending to our story, and I got knocked up about 3 months after starting the Synthroid.

And yes, please notice my creepy photobombing dog.