We’ve been having a rough time with fussy Etta lately. When she is happy, she is very very happy, but when she is bad, she is horrid. After a few nights in a row, I was looking for solutions. She loves to be bounced, HARD, in her bouncy seat. And she loves to be swaddled tightly. But those two things can’t be combined very easily, because the swaddle gets in the way of the seat’s straps.
Enter inspiration. I knew there were folks who make “swaddle straps;” I just didn’t want to pay for a baby straight jacket that seemed simple enough to sew myself. But then, I got an even easier idea: why not just cut the swaddle part of an outgrown sleep sack? A little quick cutting, and I had my very own swaddle strap. It worked great, and it was certainly put to the test last night– Etta was up 3 times instead of her usual 1. The problem wasn’t the swaddle strap so much as that she seems to believe she must be bounced at all times, and, well, I want my sleep. Still, I’ll take drowsy bouncing over unswaddled screaming any day.
Pissy baby knows she’s about to be defeated.And she’s zonked. Just do. not. ever. stop. bouncing.
Let’s face it, although they’re getting much more interactive, there’s not a lot very nearly 4 month olds can do. And so I make them pose for ridiculous photo shoots. Because I can, and because the cute is unbearable. The theme of my most recent insanity? Baby animals. Admit it: twins in animal hats with stuffed animals equals the cutest thing you’ve seen in a while. Only thing that could make it cuter is if there were an actual baby animal in the photo. Unfortunately Tinycat wanted no part of these shenanigans (the babies probably wanted no part of them either, but they lack claws of fury and the ability to hide under things).
“Don’t believe our mom. We would *never* scream our faces off for seemingly no reason.”
Last night some friends came over with BBQ for dinner and their one year old son. We all rocked out with our babies out and had a great time. If someone you know has a young baby, I highly recommend you go hang out at their house– they’re probably dying for some grown up time, but getting out to a restaurant can feel like waiting for a ticking time bomb of tears to go off, and going to someone else’s house is daunting, because you’d have to lug so. much. crap. with you, like places for baby to sit, etc. It turns out a 4-3 ratio works out great for adults to children, and I think the key is to always have one more grownup than baby around– not that that’s possible when I’ve got two twins tag-teaming me all day!
Anyway, over dinner, we were talking about a terrible night we had with a screaming baby earlier this week (spoiler alert: that baby was Etta), and how we tried “all the 5 S’s” and nothing worked to soothe her. Our friend asked what the 5 S’s are. They’re from the book The Happiest Baby on the Block, and are swaddling, shushing, sucking, swinging/swaying, and side-lying, and can be used in combo to soothe fussy babies. We’ve found them very useful, and a recent study published in Pediatrics even found them to work very well at relieving infants’ pain related to vaccines.
After this explanation, our friend quipped, “So, is the sixth S nobody talks about ‘swearing’?”
Yes. Yes it is. When all the other S’s fail, all that’s left is swearing. Which could make us a little worried about baby’s first word…
If you asked pretty much anyone who knows me, they will confirm that I am generally not a patient person. I always thought that it was a good thing that I married Jon, because he brought a calm, steady patience to the table, mediating my fly-off-the-handle tendencies to balance me out a bit. While pregnant, I was sure our children would like him better, because he’d be the endlessly patient one, and I’d be the frustrated, snippy one. It’s also a fact that I generally fall apart and begin to freak the eff out when sleep deprived, with deprivation meaning anything less than 8 consecutive, unbroken hours of sleep, possibly less than 10. (Seriously, ask Jon sometime about that incident where I *sobbed* on a red eye flight.)
But, as Jon noted during an epic Etta screamfest yesterday: maybe it’s maternal instinct or something, but somehow I’m the one with more patience with the babies. Now, I am generally opposed to making biological generalizations about things like “maternal instinct” and other forms of gender essentialism, so I have another explanation, one I offered to him: it’s just that, if I freaked out over all of this, I would literally be freaking out every day for the rest of my life. Being patient is just a self-preservation technique for living with two tiny humans who occasionally like to SCREAM THEIR EVERLOVING FACES OFF FOR SEEMINGLY NO REASON.With whom I am often left all alone.
That’s not to say I don’t sometimes *feel* like freaking the freak out. This newfound patience is not without limits. Heck, there was even that one afternoon where I handed screaming Etta to Jon and literally flopped on the floor toddler-tantrum style, in a silent flail that expressed all the frustration and exhaustion I felt. There have been evenings where I swear, if I have to do one more baby-related thing, I will just lose my shiz, so I have to sit and drink wine and read fashion blogs for 30 minutes while he handles the babies, no, do not even ask me to draw up a syringe full of one of their myriad medicines. I have a feeling these moments will keep occurring.
In the meantime, it’s been a strange world to be the patient one. I basically don’t even know how to deal with Jon being frustrated and impatient, because it’s such a complete role-reversal. Not that he (or anyone else in a similar situation) isn’t totally justified in his frustration, but he’s usually the rock and I’m usually the tornado, and we whirlwinds don’t much know what to do when our rocks go flying around. Not that he’s really flying off the handle. My husband is so naturally even-keeled that his impatience and frustration looks like anyone else’s level-headedness, but still, I find myself getting frustrated with his frustration, as if I’m saying in my head, “BUT YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO FREAK OUT! YOU HAVE TO BE THE CALM ONE, ALL THE TIME, EVERY DAY!” Which is, of course irrational. He gets to feel his feelings, just like I do.
All of this is to say, this whole parenting thing is a strange new world. I was afraid of the ways it would change us, but it’s changing us anyway, like it or not.
In closing, here’s a triptych of Etta demonstrating how we freak the freak out around here:
After seeming to talk us into the shunt surgery in the ER, our neurosurgeon seemed to spend our clinic visit talking us out of it. While she seems to agree that the surgery is basically inevitable, there is still a slim slim chance the hydrocephalus will arrest, and since she’s not having severe symptoms at this time, we have a little time to wait. In the meantime, we’re probably going to start her on Zantac and see if that helps the vomiting.
I’m glad this means no surgery this week, though I’m pretty sure she will need the shunt at some point. Guess we’ll be staying in style when that happens, because the new infant and toddler unit at our children’s hospital will be open by then.
I also realize I haven’t updated about MY health issues in a while. Based on my slow recovery and echo-cardiograms, my cardiologist had me do a contrasted cardiac MRI. It was kind of crazy to actually feel the contrast get warm in my chest every time the MRI machine was on, and I now totally see why claustrophobic people totally wig out in those things. Personally, I pretended I was an astronaut about to be blasted into space. Anyway, the upshot is, it looks increasingly like I have a congenital heart defect called left ventricle non-compaction syndrome, which basically means the tissue in my left ventricle didn’t form correctly, which is why it’s weak and has such a “poor squeeze.” The strain and stress of the pregnancy on my body is what finally made my condition severe enough to notice. I now feel vindicated and want to go back to every PE teacher I ever had and explain that my poor performance in everything endurance related is actually the fault of my heart.
The MRI also showed that my ejection fraction (a measure of how well the heart pumps blood into the body) has improved from 15% to about 30% (normal is still 50% or better). I’m still doing well on my ever-increasing cocktail of meds, and I think my doctor will be adding a third medicine (I’m already on a beta blocker and an ace inhibitor) this week, and I hope the transition goes well.
Anyway, that’s what’s going on with Claire and me health-wise. Thank you again for all of your support, thoughts, and prayers.
I’m told that as a small child, I used to stand by my parents’ bed saying HAPPY MORNING until someone woke up. Sure, it was the crack of dawn, but who can be mad at someone who is just so HAPPY that they insist someone wake up and share that joy with them?
My girls have inherited the morning happies, and I am so very glad.
Pre-babies, I often enjoyed quiet lazy mornings with Tinycat, who, much like toddler Ernie Bufflo, would meow by my bed until I grabbed some coffee and joined him in the living room (lazy mornings are the perks of a grad student schedule). He didn’t need me to play with him or feed him, he just wanted me to BE with him in the living room, internetting while he lounged in a sunny window. It came to be some of my favorite time of the day, and I wondered what mornings would be like once we added two tiny people to the family.
It turns out, they’re just as lovely. Now, I know this is one of the perks of newborns– they’re sleepy folks. My girls tend to wake up very happy around 6:30 or 7, have a bit to eat, and then spend a few minutes making smiley faces and happy squeals until they are just SO TIRED, at which point it’s time to nap until 10:30 or 11. I am enjoying these morning naps as hard as I can right now. They nap in the living room with me, while I sip coffee with Tinycat and catch up on my internetting, pausing occasionally to gaze at my gorgeous, sleeping girls. I realize that all too soon, my mornings will likely look radically different, so I’m savoring this as long as it lasts.
In fact, I’m pretty much enjoying the whole not-so-newborn phase right now. The girls are waking up only once in the night; they’re still sleepy, snuggly, and portable; and they are starting to be more interactive in terms of reacting to us, smiling at us, and making cute little noises. Sure, sometimes the day to day routine is mind-numbingly boring. Most evenings one or both of them has a VERY angry witching hour(s). And I still get barfed on an awful lot. But overall? Life at 2 months is very very sweet.
Claire naps in her Boppy on the couch.Etta naps in the swing.Tinycat naps in the recliner.
One of the few things I felt very strongly that I wanted to do as a parent was cloth diaper the girls. It’s also one of the things I get asked about most often (seriously, random texts from friends asking “can you tell me about this cloth diapering thing?”), and I figured it might be easy just to write about it and have someplace to point people when they ask me questions. So here’s that post.
Why Cloth Diaper?
Different people cloth diaper for different reasons. For me, there are two biggies. The most important to me was the environment. We recycle, garden, compost, bicycle, eat mostly vegetarian, and try to consume sustainable products. Knowing that the average baby produces at least 1.5 tons of diaper waste, all of which goes to a landfill and never biodegrades (seriously, even if you use “compostable” or “biodegradable” diapers, if you don’t compost them, they don’t get enough air and sunlight in a landfill to ever break down), I really wanted to find a better, more eco-friendly way to deal with diapering. The way I see it, we’re preventing at least 3 tons of landfill waste, and that’s huge.
My second reason is financial. Having two babies in diapers to potty training would cost at least $2k, and knowing I would probably at least be buying pricier eco-friendlier diapers if I were using disposables, that total would likely be closer to $4k.
Etta rocks a newborn Lil Joey diaper.
Now, there are seriously dirt cheap ways to cloth diaper a baby, but I was a little afraid of the cheapest option of prefold diapers and covers. I wanted to go with the easiest options, most like disposables, where you just put on the diaper with either snaps or velcro, it’s all one piece, and all I have to do is toss it in the wash afterward– no folding or pinning or other origami type skills necessary, so I chose All in One (AIO) diapers for the newborn (NB) stage and one size (OS) pocket diapers for the rest of my diapering days. I stalked deals online (Zulily, Babysteals, EcoBabyBuys, Abby’s Lane, Cotton Babies), shopped used (Spot’s Corner, various message boards, Ebay), and received many of my newborn diapers as gifts from our registry. I personally spent $125 on newborn diapers, and did not pay full price for a single diaper.
Overall I had 36 newborn AIO diapers (BumGenius, Kissaluvs, and LilJoeys) for a total cost of $388. Additionally, after the girls outgrew the NB diapers, I sold them online for $245, bringing the actual cost of my newborn diapers to $143, and, considering what I actually personally spent as a result of receiving so many diapers as gifts ($125), essentially got paid to use cloth diapers for the first 9 weeks.
I also built up a stash of 36 OS pocket diapers (BumGenius 4.0, Rumparooz, Fuzzibunz, and Alva), plus 4 Flip covers and 12 Flip inserts, plus 12 fitteds (Rearz and Thirsties) and 6 hemp inserts (Thirsties) to use for overnights. The total cost of this stash, essentially 60 changes of diapers, which I hope will last until the girls potty train, was $545.90.
$545.90 is less than one half of what I would have spent on disposable diapers for just one baby.
In addition, I purchased two large hanging wetbags, for $30 each, and 4 travel size wetbags for various prices, one at $5, one at $18, and two for $14. That adds $51 to my total.
Other folks are convinced that cloth diapers are healthier for their babies because they don’t have chemicals in them. Others swear their kids get fewer diaper rashes (this has been true of our experience). And others claim that cloth diapered kids are potty trained easier. So, maybe some of that interests you.
What are the diapers like?
OS diaper on the left, NB AIO on the right. Both from BumGenius.
For the newborn stage, the diapers are truly not much different than a disposable. The AIOs I chose are all one piece, with waterproof fabric on the outside, soft fleece on the inside, and microfiber “soakers” (the absorbent part) in between. They closed with snaps or velcro. Because the poop of formula- and breast-fed babies is water soluble, there is nothing more required than taking the diaper off the baby, tossing it in a wetbag, and unzipping the wetbag and shaking the diapers into the washer when the wetbag gets full. They can be tumble-dried on low or hung out to dry (the sun does wonders for keeping them white and fresh), and there’s no folding or stuffing required. I really don’t see how this is any more work than tossing the diapers in the trash and taking the trash out when the bag gets full. I did not find changing the diapers to be any more disgusting than the disposables we used in the hospital.
Inside a NB AIO.
The OS pockets for 9 weeks and beyond have one extra step. The absorbent soaker is not sewn into the diapers like with the NB AIOs, and instead must be “stuffed” into the pocket of the diaper after washing, and removed from the pocket of the diaper before washing. This extra step is worth it, though, because pockets can be stuffed with more and different inserts to customize absorbency, for example, by using hemp inserts in addition to or instead of microfiber inserts (that typically come with most pocket diapers) at nighttime for added absorption.
Inside a BumGenius 4.0 OS pocket diaper.
The way OS diapers are in fact one-size is that they are adjustable to fit most babies from about 10 lbs to 35 lbs. Most use snaps to change the “rise” of the diaper, and either have snaps or velcro/aplix to customize the waist. The only diaper I have that doesn’t use snaps to adjust the rise is my Fuzzibunz, which use leg elastic adjustments to change the size.
My girls were born at 6 lbs and wore their NB AIOs for 9 weeks, up to about 12 lbs. At that point, they still physically fit into the NB AIOs, but had outgrown the absorbency, leading to leaks. We switched them to the OS pockets at that point and have not had daytime leaking problems.
Rocking their first “big girl” OS diapers.
Nighttime leaks were another scenario as we began to get stretches of sleep up to 6 hours. This led me to look into fitted diapers. Fitteds look a lot like OS pockets in that they are adjustable in size. However, with a fitted, the entire diaper is absorbent, not just the soaker, so they can hold a lot more fluid. They can also be stuffed with additional inserts to make them even more absorbent. Because the whole diaper is absorbent, fitted diapers must be used with a waterproof cover. Right now we are using Thirsties Fab Fitteds at night with an additional Thirsties hemp insert and our Flip covers and have gone up to 8 hours with no problems. Even after that long, they seem like they could hold more liquid.
But isn’t it so much work?
Even with newborn twins, I haven’t found cloth diapering to be oppressively labor intensive. If you’re one of those people who hate laundry, you might hate this too. I don’t mind laundry, or diaper laundry, because a machine does all the work, and most of the work required of me can be done while sitting on my butt in front of the TV. It’s easy enough to do the cold rinse on the diapers, and then add in all the dirty baby clothes, blankets, bibs, and burp rags for the wash. I do about one extra load of laundry per day. If I had more diapers, I could do laundry less often.
But isn’t it gross?
One of the most common reactions I get is “ewww poop in your washer.” Well, blowouts and leaks happen even with disposables, so unless you’re planning to throw your kid’s clothes out every time s/he has a blowout, leak, or spitup incident, there’s going to be poop, pee, and puke in your washer too.
Other folks are grossed out that I bought some of my diapers used, noting a squick factor similar to used underwear. Once washed in hot water with soap and a little bleach, I saw no problem with it, personally.
Another common question is whether or not I have to touch poop. So far in my experience: not any more than when we have used disposables. When the girls start solids, we will have to “plop” their poop into the toilet and likely spray it off with a sprayer attached to the toilet. But overall, I don’t feel like I’m getting my hands any dirtier than I do when I change disposable diapers.
What about leaving the house?
I don’t do much different when we leave the house, except I take a smaller travel-sized wetbag to hold the dirties until I can deal with them when I get home. If we go on vacation to someplace without access to a washer and dryer, I will either buy the disposable inserts for my Flips or use disposables.
Anything else?
One thing to keep in mind with cloth diapers is not to use anything on them that might coat the fabrics or make them less absorbent. This means using “cloth diaper safe” detergents and diaper creams. Lots of folks use all kinds of specialty detergents, and there are lists that will let you know what’s safe, but I use Tide Ultra because it’s cheap, easy to find at Target, and gets my diapers clean and fresh-smelling. Folks buy all sorts of indie diaper creams too, but we use California Baby, which I can get at Target. Burt’s Bees is also cloth diaper safe, as is the lanolin you might also use on your nipples if breastfeeding, as is coconut oil.
Any questions?
Feel free to ask!
If you liked this post, you might like my later posts about cloth diapering:
I have had an epiphany. Panda bears are like babies. Babies are like pandas. Bear with me. (ha)
The other day I tweeted this picture and had the following exchange with my friend Kyran:
And that’s when I realized: BABIES ARE LIKE PANDAS.
See, I’ve long been convinced that cuteness is pretty much the only thing keeping pandas alive at this point. I once visited a panda exhibit at the Memphis Zoo and learned that pandas, biologically, should be omnivores. They have the teeth and the digestive system necessary to digest both plants and meat, like every other bear. But pandas, they are not so into the meat eating. In fact, they are like the hipster vegans of the animal world. They’re like, listening to Morrisey and munching on roughage instead of hunting some prey, and as a result, they have to literally eat bamboo all day long, just to get enough calories to stay alive. This means that all they do is eat and sleep, because they basically don’t have the energy to do anything else. I mean, do pandas even mate in the wild anymore? I’ve read about zoos basically having to use panda pornography to try and convince their pandas to get it on. And would we even be going to all this trouble to save pandas (who clearly don’t WANT to be saved), if pandas weren’t one of the cutest things in the world? Nope. Cute: it’s keeping pandas alive.
Same thing happens with babies. Nature gives them giant heads and googly eyes and thigh rolls so that we will want to keep them alive, because Lord knows they can’t do it themselves. Claire, for example, seems determined to kill herself with her favorite thing in the world: food. At least once during a feed, she will either try to breathe milk– perhaps she loves it so much, breathing it seems to be the next best thing to eating it–or will suck the nipple so far down her throat that she gags herself. Meanwhile Etta, like many babies, seems determined to fling her giant head around and hurl her body out of our arms on a regular basis. And so we spend all our time trying to keep these very cute and possibly suicidal tiny beings alive. Because they’re adorable.
Babies are the pandas of the human world. Pandas are the babies of the animal kingdom. Cuteness is the only thing ensuring the continued survival of both.
We’ve now officially been at this parenting thing for 2 months, and I’m again thinking that time has flown. Days have certainly flown by without posting around here, sorry about that! The truth is, my days are pretty dull and repetitive. Change, feed, sleep x’s two, repeat, repeat, repeat. The work is not particularly hard, but it’s pretty all-consuming, and there’s just not that much to say about it. Right now, my girls are just now starting to smile and hold their heads up on occasion, which doesn’t make for much blog fodder.
But oh, the smiling!
One of Jon’s pediatric colleagues tells new parents they just have to make it to 2 months, when social smiling starts up, and then it’s all worth it. And it’s true– a little baby-smiling goes a long way. Etta in particular has taken to the smiling this week, and is particularly happy in the mornings. The memory of our morning smiley girl either holds us over or makes us extra frustrated during our evenings with her, with a multi-hour witching hour in which she basically hates life until she finally falls asleep. It’s amazing how just getting a few smiles out of a kid will make me happy to deal with all the other stuff.
Claire, meanwhile, has marked another milestone– she is getting more consistent with her ability to get her fist into her mouth. This may seem like a silly milestone to you, but that’s just because you’ve probably not popped a pacifier back into the same mouth 15 times in the last 10 minutes. The ability to suck on a fist and thus self-soothe is priceless! Overall, I’d say we’re doing quite well. Jon has started back to work, and the girls and I are surviving at home on our own, even when he works a 24 hour shift. I’ve even made a successful shopping trip with both girls in tow! The thing other folks seem most interested in is our sleep, and the girls are still giving us 3-4 hour stretches for the most part. One night recently, Claire slept a whopping 6 hours in a row, but that has yet to be repeated, and Etta still woke up in the middle of that. Still, perhaps because I so adequately prepared myself for the worst, I have been pleasantly surprised that this whole twin parenting gig is not as bad as I imagined, possibly because it couldn’t have ever been that bad. We’ll see how I do when Jon is gone for several days in a row this month, off to Chicago for a work conference!
The other night, I had to run to Walgreens to pick up a prescription for Etta. I grabbed some C batteries for the baby swing and headed to the pickup window.
“I’m here to pick up a prescription for my daughter.”
Outwardly, I continued to have a typical interaction with the pharmacist, but the minute the words “my daughter” left my lips, my internal conversation went something like this: “Holy crap, I have a daughter. I have a DAUGHTER. I have TWO DAUGHTERS. Daughter, daughter, daughter daughter.” The word sort of ceased to have any meaning and began to sound sort of foreign in my head.
I mean, somehow, that phrase, “my daughter” just blows my mind. I had already kind of processed that I have babies, but realizing that they’re my daughters? Well, it gives me all kinds of visions of who these little people will grow up to be.
erniebufflo's south & west kitchen 