Our Little Peanut

As was obvious from my last blog, Parker isn’t so in love with the idea of solid food. More specifically, she hasn’t been all that interested in puréed baby cuisine. I asked some other moms for advice, and the idea of baby led weaning (BLW) came up.

I was interested in this idea as I’d heard of it before, but I was having a hard time figuring out what to DO. I mean, regular jarred or homemade baby food doesn’t need much explanation, especially since that’s the experience that popular culture propagates. I know for that, you get some kind of mush and put it on a spoon and “airplane” it to baby, where ideally baby would open wide, swallow, and ask for more. So someone finally explained that for BLW, you put a bit of whatever the rest of the family is eating on baby’s tray. And then let baby eat with his or her fingers, or drop it on the floor for the dog.

Having an actual action to do made BLW make a whole lot more sense to me, although I was skeptical. Whatever the family is eating? Isn’t that impractical? Can baby realistically eat spaghetti or pot roast? The other moms assured me that it was quite realistic, and that Parker would surprise me with what she would be able to consume. At 8 months, she’s well into the age of being ready for solids. She has 4 teeth, sits up without help, crawls and (shakily) stands. So I figured, why not? It’s not like the purée route is even remotely successful.

So tonight, Parker got some chicken & dumplings. And surprisingly, she ate some! Will wonders never cease. So, I guess maybe there’s something to this BLW experiment. Sure makes preparing baby food a heck of a lot easier. I’m a little disappointed I don’t get to play much with my Babycook machine, but I can always steam my food in there!

So we tried to introduce solid food to Parker last weekend, and as you can surmise, it did not go well. We first tried with banana, by both cutting it in chunks and seeing if she would play with it, and mashing some up with some breastmilk and trying to spoon feed her. She refused both. At one point, Mike got a bit of banana in her mouth, and she made a face like “WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME!?” She made the same face when she grabbed her sippy cup and realized the substance inside was not her beloved milk but WATER. *gasp*

After tossing pretty much the whole banana in the garbage, I thought that maybe we could try something different the next morning. So we gave her some banana flavored baby yogurt. The taste was much more subdued than the actual banana, and I thought she might appreciate the texture more, since the fatty portion of milk can be similar consistency as yogurt. She wasn’t really impressed, but at least it wasn’t on the same torture scale as the banana. She definitely seemed to take more for daddy than she did for me, but either way, it seems that she just isn’t ready for solids just yet. She will open her mouth for the spoon, but she swallows little if any and kind of treats the whole enterprise as some weird punishment we’ve devised. We have one more container of yogurt, but after that I think I’m going to give it a rest for a couple of weeks and try again.

I am a little disappointed because I was thinking it would be fun, and it may still be – just not yet. For now, we’ll have to stick with mommy milk.

You may have seen this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/16/co-sleeping-ad-baby-knife-dangers_n_1097170.html

Well, that’s one way of saying that we are now a mostly co-sleeping family. It definitely wasn’t by choice, but it seems to be the only way that we get a decent amount of sleep at night. We are doing it as safely as possible (no loose blankets, Parker sleeps on her back, away from the edge of the bed, etc), and I don’t feel worried about rolling over onto her. It’s funny, because it is yet another of those things I said I’d “never do”. I personally sleep better when she is in her own bed, but when the alternative is not sleeping at all, I’ll gladly snuggle her all night.

So many of the things that we’ve done as parents goes against “popular advice” or the opinions of almost everyone I know. I do have some supportive friends – which is fantastic – but mostly we’re in this alone. I know some people think I’m bonkers. And that’s okay. Maybe I am a bit bonkers, but if doing things like co-sleeping is keeping us sane, then why not? I just can’t stand to hear her crying “mamama” and NOT pick her up. I’m sure that eventually she will prefer her own bed. I seriously doubt I’ll be kicking a teenager out of my bed.

I somehow became someone who practices most of the stereotypical “Attachment Parenting” things, although I don’t really consider myself AP. Besides exclusive breastfeeding and being against “crying it out”, I don’t have passion towards the other things. They just kind of happened. And co-sleeping (or, to be more precise, bedsharing) is not my favorite. In fact, if Parker decided tomorrow that she would rather sleep in her crib, I’d be elated. But, since I have very little hope that that will happen, I’m going to take it one day at a time, and enjoy this time while she’s so little and she needs me to snuggle her back to sleep.

Well, it’s been a few weeks since we started with cloth diapers (CD) and my major impressions are – so much softer! and what a ton of laundry!

Let me elaborate.

We started with the 7 or whatever from Jillian’s Drawers. We got the Thirties Duo, Fuzzibunz Perfect Size in medium, BumGenius 4.0, Smartipants, Bummis Tots Bots, a Flip One Size and a Thirties Fitted Diaper with a Duo Wrap diaper cover. We also got 4 Indian prefolds and a Snappi, which we didn’t use. I learned a few things from trying a bunch of different types of diapers.

1) Velcro is easier… sort of. Doing snaps on a wiggly baby is not the easiest thing. Velcro is just faster. And the snaps on a diaper are not pansy snaps – these are heavy duty hard to snap snaps. You have to really push these suckers together to get them to snap, and sometimes I feel like I’m going to accidentally pinch some skin. However, they stay on better (they should!) and it’s one less step to worry about when I do the endless laundry. With the velcro, you have to take the time to make sure that the velcro is attached to something because otherwise it will find something to attach itself to and that can result in pulled threads or parts that don’t dry correctly. I’ve also heard from other CDers that the velcro wears out and needs replacing periodically.

2) Pocket diapers are better than all-in-ones (AIOs). This went against what I initially thought. Wouldn’t it be easier if the diapers were all one piece? When Mandy and I opened the package of diapers, we both were drawn to the Tots Bots AIO since the pattern was friggin’ cute (Mushroom Magic, if you are interested) and it has an insert that’s attached but slides out. (Hard to explain, but there’s a picture on the product page.) I hoped I wouldn’t like it since it is the most expensive by far. No need to worry, because it didn’t fit Parker well AND took two cycles to dry. Not only are pocket diapers better, but they dry faster. On that note…

3) Pocket diapers need an opening on each end! Another diaper I thought I would like was the BumGenius 4.0. This diaper has a pocket where you stuff the absorbent insert into. However, when washing the insert gets all bunched up in the interior of the pocket. Ideally, you would let the cycle run the first rinse and then remove the insert for the wash cycle. However, with pocket diapers like Smartipants, the pocket is open on both sides, so the insert wriggles itself out during the wash cycle. That’s one less step to worry about!

4) CDs are very customizable. Not only do most diapers come with an array of snaps that allow you to make the diaper smaller to fit your baby (typical of One Size diapers) in both directions, they also have a bunch of different ways that can be worn. You can add and remove inserts to customize baby’s needs. There are even flushable inserts that you can line the diaper with. We haven’t bothered to use the ones that we got because Parker’s poop is still much too watery to even bother.

And they have definitely helped with her rashy tush. She seems much happier in the cloth, but that could just me projecting my own hopes onto it. It is a little bulky underneath her clothes but it’s not too bad. Best of all, we hope to start saving money! We were able to get our first 20 or so diapers pretty cheaply, and hopefully we won’t have to buy too many more. All the ones we got are “one size” so we hope to be able to use them on the next kid too! Any questions?

I can’t believe that my parenting “philosophy” has changed so much since I first became pregnant. First the natural birth and exclusively breastfeeding, and now cloth diapering. I definitely haven’t changed as part of a “fad” though, I’m merely being pragmatic. Our little girl is quite the pooper, and that has translated into a constant diaper rash and going through about 3 boxes of diapers a month. That’s approximately 75 diapers per week. Yeah, and when we were using Huggies, that was about 25 cents a diaper. We have since switched to the Target brand, which is about 15 cents a diaper, but still. We’re talking 10+ diaper changes a day. It adds up. After reading about the benefits of cloth diapers, we decided to give it a shot. We ordered a trial from Jillian’s Drawers where we get 9 different types of cloth diapers to try, in a variety of brands.

Today we went through 6 different styles of diaper, plus 1 diaper cover. I’m definitely leaning toward the all-in-one’s and the pocket diapers, which basically work just like a disposable except they are super soft and you can toss them in the wash. Oh, and some have snaps that adjust the size of the diaper. I was mostly worried that they would be huge and bulky, but I put a onesie on her in the afternoon and you couldn’t tell the difference! I was quite impressed. And the rash appears to be clearing up, but I don’t want to jump to conclusions just yet, since it seemed okay this morning too, after being in a disposable all night long. At any rate, it did not worsen!

I’ve got to say, it’s only been one day but so far I’m really impressed with the ease and quality of the cloth diapers. The only pain in the butt (no pun intended) part was the prewashing for the Bummis Tots Bots brand. Parker hasn’t even worn it yet because it required to be washed and dried separately THREE TIMES before use! I could have washed the prefolds with it, but Mike and I looked at them and we both laughed at the idea of putting them on a wiggly baby. (Prefolds are the old school type of diaper, that requires a pin and some origami lessons.) I’m planning to keep using them as much as possible over the next week and we’ll see how it goes!

I really wanted to blog more than this about life as a mommy. There’s a weird mixture of too much busy and too little excitement that makes blogging seem almost silly. I want to keep family and friends up to date on all of the happenings in Parker’s life, but most of it is almost better shared on something like Twitter. I’ve been posting a “daily Parker” picture on Google+ everyday, but it is restricted to a few people on my friends’ list. I do share a few tidbits here and there, spread out across my social networking sites. I did revive my Tumblr account because that seems to be a useful way to get everything together. I’ll be giving out the password to people who ask for it.

Being a mom is quite the experience. It’s constantly being “on”. I think that has been the hardest part for me. Sometimes I just want to tune out and go inside myself, take a mental breather. But Parker always needs me. My “me” time usually happens after she goes to bed (if it’s early enough, sometimes she doesn’t go to sleep until I do) and when she is nursing or napping. I think even though I’m not doing anything particularly taxing, it’s exhausting because she needs me so continuously. And I’m not complaining! As “jobs” go, this is a pretty great one. Anything you can do in your PJs is pretty awesome, I have to admit.

As a developmental update, Parker has been exclusively eaten breastmilk from day 1. I’m so proud of that! It was really hard at first but we are succeeding. It was really important to me for us to exclusively breastfeed until she started solids, and even after that to not have any formula. She is smiling and laughing a lot, and making lots of vocalizations. Mostly vowel sounds, but the other day she let out a “guh”! She is just about to roll over. I’ve been saying “any day now” for a few weeks, but she keeps getting closer and closer. I’m not really helping her roll over, because I want her to do it on her own. I think for now she’s just happy to turn on her side. She has been sucking on her fingers happily. Every now and then she stares at her hands like “WOWEE, what are THOSE?” She’s starting to notice other people, but is still preferring mommy and daddy (but mostly mommy) to everyone. She loves to play under her activity gym, and seems to really like music and movement. Baths were traumatic, then fun, then traumatic again, and now that she has discovered splashing are fun again. Her favorite toys are blankets and burp cloths, although she has as few plush toys she seems to enjoy squeezing and putting in her mouth. She’s been sleeping in her crib almost all through the night for almost a month. The sleep thing has been an interesting journey, but all told we have a pretty good sleeper. We started by co-sleeping, which I wasn’t really wanting to do, but we were desperate for sleep. Then at 1 month we moved her into her bassinet, and then at 2.5 months, the crib. It’s still some work to get her to sleep and I hear that between 4 and 6 months things can go sour in the sleeping department. She now weighs almost 17 lbs and is about 25 inches long. That means she is just about in 9 month size clothing!

I can’t think of anything else that’s going on. We’re mostly trying to get out during the day as much as possible, while still being frugal. We don’t have much of a schedule these days, but I’m not so worried about that. She doesn’t seem to fall into a schedule easily. Takes after her mommy that way.