The Co-sleeper and the Crib-sleeper

The biggest difference between my children is where they sleep. This isn't how I wanted it to be, I had envisioned either a huge family bed or them in their own beds.
 I started them both out the same way. For the first few weeks, they both slept on my chest. Then, when they learned how to nurse laying down, they both nodded off with my breast as a chin pillow. I have many many fond, shadowy memories of them that way. Then, slowly I moved them into the mini co-sleeper I have attached to my bed. My son never lasted long in it, so it always ended up being a place to store my water bottle, books, and other things.  My daughter slept soundly in the co-sleeper, sometimes through the night. Nap time, I nursed them both to sleep on our bed, then silently, slinking away I left them there with pillows on either side. At 6 months, I started putting them to sleep in the crib in the nursery. With my son, he would wake up around 11pm , I would get him and nurse then slip into milk-drunk slumber. My daughter would wake, nurse and then proceed to scream for an hour with me on the last nerve by the time she fell back to sleep.
My son has since been in the habit of sneaking out of his bed at night and into ours, oddly in the same routine we had when he was in his crib. When I was pregnant, I tried to break him of this habit. Mostly because he was a restless sleeper and I was worried he would slap, kick, and roll onto the new baby. This worked to no avail. It ended up with several nights of him actually waking completely and then hiding under the dining room table.
I am not a fan of 1am hide and seek.
So, I gave up in favor of sleep.
I had the baby, and things went according to above. Only with her, he was in the bed between my husband and I, while she lay sleeping on the safe side of me. There were a few things that changed quickly. She learned how to roll over quickly and creep. She fell off the bed twice in her trek towards my husbands alarm clock. Then she started being more restless at night, either waking and nursing constantly or just waking and crying. Needless to say, she took to the crib quickly. No disturbances, no snoring, and quiet. So apart from a few nights where she wakes due to teething or gas, she sleeps in her crib. While my son is snuggled up against me every night.
I'm sure this will change when she is no longer in her crib. But only time will tell that.

Business of Being Born: Down on the Farm

Just watched it with one of my BF's and I have to say, that I LOVED it. Obviously. I want to meet Ina May Gaskin.........so badly. Road Trip tomorrow if it were possible. She has so much love for what she does and such a desire for helping to inform and change how women view pregnancy and birth. She is brilliant.

There was one thing that she said in the movie that just took me totally by surprise and I want to find the actually statistic for it somewhere now and put it here. She claimed that there is no Autism in Amish communities where women give birth in their beds and that there hasn't been a single case of it on The Farm, where she works.
wow.........just wow. That made me stop and think.
Hold on! NONE!? But then that goes to some of the things I posted earlier (much earlier) when I was pregnant about the medications that they give pregnant women in labor. Most of them have no FDA legal dosing, so the Doctors are just winging it and the dose is different per Doctor.
Then there is ultrasounds. It's been proven that when you apply ultrasounds to some cells they enlarge and change.
What are WE doing to our babies in the medical communities??
I just had to write about his quickly. I am exhausted, but fear not there will be more.

The Ammonia Slap

Since it's on my mind right now (because I have my diaper inserts in the washer soaking in hot water as I am writing this), it's going to be my first topic.

I have had a love/hate relationship with my microfiber inserts since day one of using pocket diapers. I loved how absorbent they are, but I hated that they stink easily. And when I say stink I mean 'Ammonia Slap!' stink. I didn't have this problem with my son, but I also used prefolds and gauze flat folds with him. I have been trying desperately to figure out why they stink so bad. I thought it was my washing routine, so I changed that. Nope. Thought maybe it was the detergent I was using, so I now have each CD safe detergent you can buy off of 'Kelly's Closet'. Nope. It has now ended with me having to soak and strip my inserts at almost every single wash.
This is not why I do cloth diapering. I do cloth diapering for the easy factor. The not having to shower, dress, pack up the kids, drive to the store and buy diapers factor. Because really, no one cares that I am outside hanging diapers up to try in my pjs, at two in the afternoon. Especially me.
So this has been the bane of my cloth diapering for the past three months. And mind you, I don't cheat unless I have the rash from heck. My daughter is in cloth even at night.
Then I read something that has brought great, IMMENSE relief to me and answered my question of WHY my inserts stink and slap me in the face when I change a diaper or dump them into my washer.
Microfiber is a polyester fiber. Polyester is made from oil. Microfiber is also man made, it doesn't occur naturally. There is no microfiber tree/plant that people go pick it off of and weave it into something usable.  So basically, by using microfiber, I am expecting something made of oil to absorb a water like fluid. Oil doesn't like water and microfiber doesn't like to let water flow through it. (Very scientific, I know.) So this is the reason my inserts stink! Despite my desperate attempts at washing and rinsing and soaking. PHEW!! I thought I had suddenly developed stupid or something.
So, after the holidays, maybe even before since I really am sick of this. I will be attacking the 5yds of hemp my friend is so kindly going to let me have some of. I'm going to cut it into really long strips that can be folded over themselves for greater absorbency and commence with the washing. Why hemp? Hemp is more absorbent that cotton and I have never ever had an ammonia issue with my hemp inserts. Especially now that they are completely fluffed up. They last up to 6hrs for me, another layer and I foresee awesome night time absorbency and dry mornings in my future.

And I think I'm going to leave this one open with a question. Have you experienced the Ammonia Slap? How did you resolve it?

End of the hiatus...

Or laziness I should say. I had every intention of continuing religiously after I had my daughter. And you see how well that went.
But, I am going to try my hardest from here on to blog, to rant, to vent, and to discuss. Maybe even inform, not sure yet.
Now on to my biggest problem, picking one of the millions of things that has come to mind over the past months and one of the millions of articles, blogs, that I have read to comment on or review in my own way.

Now where to start.............

My daughters gift

Those of you who have been following along for a while, might have an idea of what these are. For those of you who are just joining in my madness, these are my placenta pills.  I've been taking between one to three a day since I got them. These isn't a prescribed way to take them, it's mostly based on how you feel. Bad days, take more, good days, take less. They have a bit of a funny smell to them, but no worse than any other vitamin (not that I go around smelling vitamins).  I've been taking them for about three weeks now along with the iron tablet I was taking while I was pregnant.  I can't tell you how wonderful it has been. Sure there have been hard days, mostly it's just learning how to deal with two kids and really wanting to get out and work this baby weight off.  But, I can tell you I would not be this functional if I wasn't taking these and the iron. When I was three days post, I crashed. My mood crashed, my energy, everything.  (This was before they were finished.) I cried because my husband had burned the risotto. Yes you read that right, I wasn't cooking. I had started the meal and my husband took over because someone else was demanding food.  Well, he partially burned the butternut squash risotto I had started. It wasn't ruined, it just started to stick to the bottom of the pot. But that was enough to send me to our bedroom in tears. So, going on that trend, I don't think I would be functional without these vitamins. I'd probably be found in the bathroom crying because we were out of Kleenex or something else stupid. (Not deodorant though, I do cry when I run out of that.)

Cloth diaper mental mayhem

I've been cloth diapering our daughter since her cord stump fell off. It's been a mish-mash of what was left that was usable in our stash from our son. I have four pocket diapers that are different brands (Kawaii baby, Coolababy, Sunbaby, and Babyland), I have the Dappi's rubber pants in size newborn which the elastic is stretched out on, I had bought some of the Dappi's size small velcro cloth diapers and I have one diaper cover by Flips (which also makes BumGenius). Gratefully my daughter has chunked up enough that we decided to go ahead and order a new stash of pocket diapers, the trouble was, which one????
With our son, I used a system of wraps and just used the Gerber cloth diapers. Towards the end I had attacked the Gerbers, sewn them together and created a contoured cloth diaper. Also, in my learning curve I had ruined four wraps by Bummis, which, surprisingly, wasn't that hard to do. But it was still money that went down the toilet and I ended up throwing them out. Which sucked because they were SOO Cute!

Now knowing what detergents are safe and how to wash them properly, I am ready to go into the world of pocket diapers. Which are awesome because they go on like a disposable, you pull out the insert when dropping it in the dirty pail, wash, dry, stuff, REPEAT! Love it! I love cloth diapering!  My dilemma was, which ones to go with? One of my friends love BumGenius, which I love too, but we just weren't ready to shell out over three hundred for cloth diapers. I love the Snazzy Minky Kawaii baby diaper, it's super absorbant, cute, but it's bulky as heck (huge diaper butt here!) and the legs and waist don't fit right. If you have the right fit on the waist, it's too tight on the legs, to the point of leaving red marks. The other three are nice, very nice actually, but they are made in China. Now this is where it got sticky with me. Do I order the American made diapers and pay twice as much? Or do I pay around $150 and get the same amount of diapers with similar quality? For about three days I had a headache because of this. In the end I went with the Coolabay diapers, bought on e-bay, made in China and I'll tell you why. Everything is made in China! The clothes I put on my kids are chinamade, my clothes are and so are my husbands. I pretty sure half the crap in our house is too. So, why feel guilty about it? I know, work conditions, pay, yadda yadda........but if I'm going to be a stckler about where the diapers are coming from, shouldn't I be about everything? Honestly. The point of cloth diapering is about saving money and the enviroment, which I can do with these diapers. So why the guilt trip? Because there are so few things that you have this much of an option with, that tells you where something came from. If I was shopping at a store that had a rack of American made clothes, same style, in with clothes made in other countries. I'd do my best to buy American made. Yet, if that shirt cost twice as much as the others, I'd think twice. Why? Because, like thousands of others, I'm not rich. I'd splurge on occasion and get the american made, but not if it meant putting myself in debt.

So with that being said, I guess I am a true American, I buy imported, made some where else, things. But I'm saving the enviroment...........that counts right?  Oh well, at least the diapers are cute.

My Second

If you haven't guessed by now, the reason why I haven't written anything in two weeks is because I had my baby.  That and the lack of access to a computer without one of my kids needing me.

That Saturday was pretty uneventful. Needing to get out of the house, we went to the mall and did some window shopping and walking. Later we ordered pizza and wings and then watched a movie before calling it a night.  Around 11pm, I woke up to a strange pressure/pop feeling. I stayed still wide eyed, trying to figure out what just happened. "Did my water just break or was that my hip?" Since there wasn't a gush, I closed my eyes assuming it was my hip. Later I rolled over and then there was the gush. I bolted out of bed into the bathroom, expecting the all out waterfall I had had with my son. This was a trickle, maybe a cup of water and then nothing. I got stood up thinking that moving would get more to come out. Nope. Standing did get the contractions going though. The first and second came one on the other before they got into a pattern. After they were over, I went back to the bedroom to tell my husband that I was in labor. He almost didn't believe me. I then called one of the midwives to tell her my water had broken. She asked me to time the contractions and call back in 20mins. We timed them, they were between 3-5 mins, I called back and she said they were on their way.
So far they weren't very strong, I could talk through them, walking made them more intense, but not enough to make walking impossible. The midwives arrived around 11:45pm and we sat and talked for a bit. I sat sipping Red Raspberry tea and womens blend while my poor husband struggled to get the hose to work with the faucet, no luck. He couldn't get it to stay tight enough to create enough pressure to send water through the hose.  He started bucketing water into the pool. Once we ran out of hot water, we all decided that rest was a good idea. Not knowing how fast or slow my labor was going to be.  The midwives dozed in our sons toy room, which has two guest beds. I was on the sofa, my husband on the love seat.

Around 3am, I got up not able to sleep or even rest during them. I had gotten up several times to use the bathroom, mostly just ending up sitting there through the contractions. I found myself in the kitchen when transition hit. I had been thinking about food, if I was hungry enough to eat and then what to eat. Cereal, yogurt?  After having two that I had to vocalize through, I headed back to the bathroom. I became stranded there with them coming closer and closer and much more intense. I had to add to what vocalizing I was doing. My husband came in and started rubbing my back, I asked him to get one of the midwives.  I had just hit a place I'd never been before and was worried if I would be having the baby soon or have four more hours of this. She came in and listened to me for a min, then she listened to the baby's heartbeat. She asked if it was ok to check me. I said sure and pryed myself off the toilet, slowly making it back to the living room. My husband had started his bucket filling of the pool again, this time enlisting the help of our giant pots. I lay down on the sofa so she could check me. Surprise filled her face as she said "OH! Hi baby." She smiled and told me I was fully dilated.  When I sat up the next contraction doubled me over into a hunch as I felt the sudden urge to push. (They weren't kidding when they coined that sentance!)  I moaned out " I need to push....!" The second midwife jumped into action.  They assesed the pool situation and despite my husbands best attempts, it wasn't half yet. So, they set up shop right there on the floor. Chucks pads galore. With the contractions almost one after the other, I draped myself over one our footstools in a supported squat. It felt soooo good to push. I pushed to where I couldn't stand the burn and then panted it out, letting myself stretch to let baby out.  As soon as it was beyond intense it was over. They caught her and placed her between my legs. I picked her up and sat down in complete awe. I had done it! I had my baby at home, she was healthy pink and let out a nice sqwak. She nursed while we waited for the placenta, then they cut the cord.

My mother-in-law (who had been there the whole time) heard the whole thing through the grate in the living room ceiling that led to the upstairs guest room. After realising that she had heard it all, we asked if she wanted to come down and meet her granddaughter. She rushed down and we all celebrated, quiet as possible because my son was still asleep in bed. After the celebrating, one midwife asked if we wanted to see the placenta. She showed us the maternal side (that was connected to me) and the infant side. The amneotic sack was still intact and she showed us the hole from which the baby had come out of. (I wish we had thought to take pictures.) We donated the cord and they took the placenta to encapsulate it for me. My husband called my parents who were wide awake at 4am for whatever reason.

The midwives hung around after I was tucked into bed in case something happened. I drank two cups of Red Raspberry Leaf tea before I fell asleep. When my son woke up, my husband brought him into our room to meet his new sister.  Still high from the experience, we were visited by friends and family while the phone rang off the hook.

A most happy experience that I would love to repeat.