Category Archives: Pregnancy and Motherhood

From the truly tasteless and disgusting to emotional stories that feel very much like heartburn squirming on a pitchfork this is my parenting journey from pregnancy forward.

Daycare interview

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Friday I had an appointment to check out a possible daycare provider for when I go back to work in March. I thought that I would want a small in home type of daycare, but the one I went to see today has me rethinking it all. I wanted a in home type because I felt like it would be more like staying with extended family or something. The owner seemed nice and the two people working for her also very nice. The daycare space was a converted two car garage that they put a small kitchen and bathroom into. The older kids and infants were separated, which was a plus. There was a separate sleeping space with five cribs for the babies that gave me the creeps. The cribs were pretty old rickety cheap things that looked like baby cages. All of the separate rooms left very little area for the kids to play in considering the number of children. Even if she had a yard for them to play in, which I didn’t ask about, with the weather around here there aren’t many pleasant outdoor days.

When I first walked into the door three little girls came up to me to see the baby. I didn’t really want them so close to my baby especially since one of them had a runny nose. The daycare owner told that girl to go wipe her nose and for the others to go play, which they did. The daycare owner asked me to have a seat. I didn’t really want to interview her there. It was so loud with so many kids in a small area. I sat anyway. She went away to get something and I suddenly found myself surrounded by the girls again and they were petting my child’s face before I could say anything. And what do I say? How do I politely tell three otherwise well behaved children that I don’t want them touching my kid? I haven’t really been around so many kids before (as an adult). I don’t know how to deal with other people’s children and don’t really want to deal with them at all. Besides, Sophia was smiling at them and seemed to enjoy the attention. I felt cornered and found myself pushing one of the girls hands away. I didn’t even realize I was doing it. The daycare owner again told the girls to go play and also added that I may not want them to touch my baby. – Ugg she saw.

She gave a little bit of background of her business and her own background. She also gave advice about what to look for in a daycare. I liked her approach, but her overall place just didn’t sit well with me. She kept saying that the place was a mess, but that it was a daycare. She advised me that if a place was too dirty it wasn’t good, but if a place was too clean I should be concerned about what the kids are allowed to do. That makes sense. Cleanliness really wasn’t the issue I had with the place though, but the fact that she repeated that several times through my visit did bother me. She made sure to ask each child if they had washed their hands as they came out of the bathroom. I’m glad that she did, but wonder if it was only for my benefit after seeing my reaction or if she always did that.

She was very upfront with her reverences and said that any quality daycare provider should offer them without being asked. Later she admitted that one of her references was her own daughter. *eye roll* She kept asking me if I had any questions for her, and I did ask some, but I think Kurt was right when he said to just let them do the talking. She did ramble on saying things she maybe wouldn’t have had I bombarded her with questions like Kurt said. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t bring my list and that the majority of my questions flew out of my head upon entering her place.

Of all the things I observed I think what really struck me is the one shy child that just sat there the whole time and never once made a peep. When I asked questions about how long the older children had been in her care she mentioned them all except for this one. She also didn’t mention the child when introducing me to all the others.

The whole experience plus just the idea of leaving my baby with a stranger scared the living shit out of me. I was so shaken by it all I had to call up a friend and go visit. I just needed to be out of the house and keep myself from being alone with my thoughts. Thanks for being there for me.

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Look at that hair!

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I forgot to mention on my clothing post that yesterday was the first time I took Sophia out in public where not everyone admiring her cuteness rambled endlessly about the full head of long downy hair my monkey baby sports. Usually people will go on and on as if there is no baby under all that hair, but not today. Several people commented on the shoes she wore for the first time.

baby's first shoes

These Robeez shoes were given to us by a friend. Two hours after we arrived home from the hospital with Sophia our friend called to see if she could come over and “drop something off”. I told her she had perfect timing. She hadn’t even heard the news yet. :P I hadn’t thought much about Sophia wearing shoes especially not the very day we brought her home. I often see babies with only one shoe on because the other has fallen off to a place only dogs and people without children can find and thought they only added to the cute baby factor on kids that can’t even walk yet, but yesterday was so cold! I realized a nice pair of leather shoes provide a kind of protection from the elements that socks alone just can’t, and these shoes fit very snuggly so they don’t fall off. The elastic really keeps them on well and they’re so cute!

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Icebox house, breastfeeding, and other clothing adventures

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Tuesday I woke up to a cold house. In the morning I blew it off as a cold snap outside that my furnace would soon compensate for, but a couple hours later it was still cold. Our house is a tri-level and each floor has its own temperature zone that varies about five to ten degrees from the floor below or above. I usually hang out on the third floor since it’s always the warmest. I went downstairs to try overriding the energy saver thermostat thing but nothing happened, and damn was it frickin’ cold down there! The thermostat read 60 degrees (Fahrenheit), but I really don’t think it was even that warm. Sophia was fussy all day and wouldn’t let me put her down anywhere because every surface was cold. She didn’t take any naps ans wouldn’t sleep even though she was wearing three layers and I was holding her. By two o’clock I had enough and had realized that I had not heard the furnace kick on once through the whole day.

I called Kurt at work a little ticked off because I thought he had programmed some funky cold temperature only comfortable to him and anyone used to living in a medieval castle. “How the hell do you change the temperature on this thing?” He gave me the instructions, but that was exactly what I had tried earlier. He asked me to check the circuit breaker. I was frustrated holding a phone in one hand and fussy monkey baby in the other, so I was too impatient to try and cipher the scrawl on the panel from twenty-seven years ago. “I have one thing to do and I’ll come right home.” He said. He’s so sweet (sometimes). In the mean time I wondered where we would stay if the furnace needed to be replaced, and oh god that would be another expense on a house we want to move out of soon!

It turned out to be the circuit breaker – the house warmed up, and Sophia slept all evening. Amazingly, I was still able to get her to bed at her usual 10pm that night. Unfortunately, morning wakeup came early on Wednesday. That’s ok, I can play zombie mom. It’s my own fault for staying up late to play with blog stuff. Actually, I got quite a bit done on Wednesday morning. I even had a shower by 9am. At ten I called a friend to explain some blog things to her (I helped her with a WordPress blog that I will more formally present once she has a little more to read – in the mean time if anyone in the Seattle are needs an event coordinator let me know ;-) ).

My friend and I went out to lunch a couple hours later and I woke up my napping baby to go from the car to the restaurant. I didn’t think it was a big deal since she usually goes back to sleep easily when I’m carrying/holding her. Sophia was great up until my food arrived and she decided she was hungry as well. Up until this point, I haven’t even attempted feeding her in public. I usually take her to the car if I need to feed her; it just seems more private that way. What’s odd is that before having a baby I had no problem flashing my little booblets around. Somehow feeding my baby seems like a private thing almost like going to the bathroom but a lot less disgusting. It’s either that or it’s because my previous booblets seemed harmless where as my new super-sized milk producing machines could put an eye out. I don’t know. Either way I haven’t mastered the technique necessary for private feeding and I made this my first attempt. It didn’t go well. I think I managed the privacy part well, but apparently, Sophia can’t find my nipple in the dark. I took the shrieking monster and my baby-blanket-covered-self outside to the car while my friend had my food boxed up for me (thank you). Sophia stopped screaming the minute I left the restaurant. I don’t know if it was the cold air, she liked that I was walking, or if the busy favorite lunch spot was just too loud for her to concentrate on eating. She happily ate in the quiet car and fell asleep.

I drove to a park, finished my lunch and then went to the store. I went to the store to buy a Christmas gift (which I did get), but I also bought a cute Christmas-y red suit for Sophia. She now has two Christmas outfits. Later in the day I found out Kurt almost bought the same outfit when he stopped at the same store after work. :P She has him so wrapped around her little finger. The day I posted the photo on this Wordless Wednesday he came home and told me he didn’t get any work done because he spent the whole day staring at her.

When Sophia and I got home, I fed her again while she made coffee percolating sounds in her pants. Time to change the baby – OHMYGOD – she shit herself up to her nipples – literally! Usually when she has a blowout, I’m able to roll her onesie up in a way that no poop touches her face as I pull it over her head – no such luck this time. Thankfully her onesie jumped on that bomb and contained the bulk of it. I didn’t notice right away but apparently my clothes weren’t spared from all of the fallout, and now for our unscheduled baby bath accompanied by blood curdling screams. For the first month or so of her life Sophia screamed bloody murder if you changed her diaper, but didn’t mind baths at all – that’s not the case now. Now it’s the reverse for both.

I got her dressed, re-dressed myself and fed her again. She fell asleep just before dad got home, and was completely out for four hours! I took a little nap too because I knew there would be little sleep for me later! I’m new, but I’m not completely daft.

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Baby giggles

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Sophia laughed for the first time today. I’ve heard her laugh in her sleep a couple of times, but this is the first time she did it awake. I was singing the little nursery rhyme “patty-cake” to her. Anyone that has heard my singing-like attempts knows why she started laughing. The little shit. I know I know, it’s a nursery rhyme and not a song. You see, that’s just how bad it really is, and I can’t ever remember the words to anything! Kurt SHUT UP!

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The great diaper war

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In case you didn’t notice, in my apparently shocking baby squeezins diaper post, the great cloth verses disposable diaper war is over and Kurt won out. The issues I brought up in favor of cloth diapers were less diaper rash, faster potty training, and the use of Sodium polyacrylate in disposables. Kurt wanted the ease diapering that comes with disposables and he was thoroughly disgusted with the idea of washing dirty diapers in the washing machine.

The non-issues were:

Environmental – I’m not at all convinced that cloth is anymore environmentally friendly than disposables. Yes, you can use it repeatedly for multiple children but it still has to be manufactured, often using bleached cotton. Polyesters are also used in newer brands of cloth diapers to wick the wetness away from baby, and water and detergent is consumed to wash them. No matter what brand is used detergents are not as friendly to the environment and soap, but soap cannot be used on diapers as it reduces absorbency because it leaves a film that overtime can also cause odors to linger. Cloth diapers also require a cover – usually plastic.

Disposable diapers, obviously manufactured, use wood pulp from trees specifically grown for diaper purposes. So toss aside the deforestation argument. They have a plastic outer layer and collect in landfills. But landfills are changing and they aren’t all as evil as they once were.

Waste Management to tap landfill methane
Garbage hauler to spend $400 million to turn greenhouse gas into power
updated 8:26 a.m. PT, Wed., June. 27, 2007

Waste Management Inc., the nation’s largest garbage hauler and landfill operator, plans to spend roughly $400 million over the next five years building facilities at 60 landfills to convert methane gas to electricity, its most ambitious renewable energy project to date.

Financial – We are not in a financially strapped type of situation. If we were, I would not have been looking at Fuzzi Bunz and Kissaluvs as my main cloth diapering choices. While I did want to do cloth diapers, I also wanted it to be just as easy to change as disposables. For the true economic diapering, the prefold cloth diapers are the award winners. They cost about $1.50 to $2.50 depending on size and fabric type. About 36 diapers and 6 to 8 pairs of plastic pants in three sizes and you’re pretty much all set. Unfortunately, they leak on a much more regular basis than then disposable “blow out”. Depending on how I ultimately went about things my totals would have been somewhere between $750 and $950 and that doesn’t include cloth wipes, and washable dirty diaper bags. The brand of disposables that we chose would cost about $1100 over the course of two and a half years ($29.99 for a box of 234 – rounds up to thirteen cents a diaper, twelve diapers a day for two and a half years). We don’t use twelve a day and the bigger she gets the fewer she uses per day. Fewer diapers come in the box as she goes up in size though so it may even out my padded number.

The Issues I had for cloth/against disposable diapers:

Faster potty training – I don’t have any valid evidence that cloth diapers would lead to faster potty training, but because cloth doesn’t have the wetness wicking powers that the super absorbent disposable diapers do I added faster potty training to my list of benefits with the assumption that most babies wouldn’t want to sit in their own filth. I have heard of many toddlers that could really care less if their pants are wet and/or poopy and will continue happily playing until someone tells them they stink and wrestles them to the ground for a diaper change, so going cloth might simply be adding more work without any benefit in that arena. I hope that my kiddo isn’t one of those.

Diaper rash – Cloth or disposable, no matter how a baby is diapered they’re going to get diaper rash sometime during their diapered years simply because they’re in a diaper. I know this, and I have not found a single piece of credible information that can say for certain that one type of diaper will without a doubt cause fewer rashes on my baby. I was just hoping that with cloth, maybe we would have less rash problems than with disposable. Based on my scouring of the internet I’ve found that the best ways to avoid diaper rash aside from letting the little one run around nekkid (it is good to let them air out a bit, but I prefer not to clean urine and feces off the couch, floor, etc.) is to change her right after she goes. This is the problem I have because there are times that she lets out one more little fart. It’s so little it hardly justifies another change regardless of the type of diaper. The other thing is nighttime. She sleeps for four hours at a time and I’m not about to wake her up to do a diaper check every hour just to make sure it’s dry. At least in disposables it’s wicked away from her skin.

Many sites say that if cloth diapers are used that it’s best to use a cover made of a breathable material and not plastic to “let air circulate”. That’s fine, there are also waterproof pants that are made of “pul” (polyurethane laminate) that are very popular in the cloth diapering community. Seems odd to me to have a community based on the way one diapers their baby but oh well. I also think it’s funny that pul seems to be regarded as a better choice than plastic when both are waterproof and I don’t think either is a breathable material. There are also wool covers, but that seems like it would be too bulky for daytime use, and too hot for indoor summertime use.

Sodium polyacrylate – Up to this point, all issues and non-issues either come to a draw or lean a little more towards the disposable diaper. The one thing that hands down leans towards cloth is the fact that ALL disposable diapers use sodium polyacrylate for super absorbency. sodium polyacrylate is the same stuff that causes Toxic Shock Syndrome in women that wear tampons and don’t change them frequently enough. As I’ve said before, I know there is a difference between the internal use of tampons and the external use of diapers. I have not found incidents where a baby has died or become sick due to the sodium polycrylate in disposable diapers. I know it’s an unrealistic fear, but I still don’t like the idea of sodium polyacrylate in my baby’s diapers. So why are we using disposable diapers despite my fear? Number one, because I know it’s an unrealistic fear and number two, because Kurt said, “I want you to be able to spend time with your daughter instead of cleaning diapers all the time.” He really hits below the belt doesn’t he?

So we are using Costco’s Kirkland brand diapers and their wipes. We went with a store brand diaper not because it’s cheaper but because they don’t add all the dyes and perfumes. I’m really happy with their wipes too because they’re thick, made with cotton, and alcohol-free.

We did use cloth wipes for the first month because in the class we took about newborn care said not to use commercial wipes for the first month. They said that for the first month that the baby’s skin is adjusting to the new waterless environment and to simply use a damp cloth for wiping. I’ve heard that it’s good to go back to damp cloth wipes during diaper rashes as well.

A couple good links for further diaper debate reading…
Among the Earth Baby Set, Disposable Diapers Are Back, By MICHAEL SPECTER, Published: October 23, 1992.
Revisiting the Diaper Debate

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Three Wishes

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Last year on December 25th I received my monthly sign that I was not pregnant. Merry frickin’ Christmas to me after trying to concieve for a year and a half! I gave up. The next day I bought tickets so Kurt and I could celebrate our eighth anniversary in Vegas. I gave up on the, “but what if I get pregnant and I won’t be able to enjoy it cause I’ll be so tired” crap. When our anniversary rolled around I was pregnant. I was so tired I took a nap in our room in the pyramid at the Luxor immediately after we arrived. That same night we had tickets to see Penn & Teller. I was still so sleepy that people must have thought I was stoned. I did eat really well while we were there. I just had to avoid certain areas of the buffet tables.

This year December 25th can’t be ruined, monthly cycle or not. This year December 25th will be Sophia’s third month birthday and Kurt’s mom, sister, and niece will be coming from Michigan to see her.

The only two wishes I’ve ever had have both finally come true. In 2005 I went to Europe and in 2007 I have a baby. This year (just recently really) I have a third wish (aside from the obvious wanting to talk Kurt into doing the baby thing one more time in a couple years), but I haven’t decided the details on this wish. I have a friend that recently had her heart crushed. I know she felt like this one was “THE ONE”, so I’m not sure if I should wish that he come to his senses and tell her what she wants to hear (Not because it is what she wants to hear, but because he means it and finally knows it) or that she finds someone else soon and when they fall in love he will recognize it.

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Special double duty poop day

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This morning Sophia sat on my lap facing me with her feet up kicking at my chest stopping momentarily to let out a wet squishy fart. Her farts usually come in twos or threes so I waited for – yep there it went right on cue. I waited ten more minutes to make sure. Ok time to change the baby. Lift her up and…oh crap looks like I get to change my pants too. I guess white onesies aren’t the only ones susceptible to blowouts. Pink Elmo onesies may also be shit on.

I changed the baby and figured since I have to change my clothes I may as well take a shower at that time, but first I’ll let the dogs outside. Now from time to time I feel guilty that we only allow the dogs in our tiled basement. Today turned out to not be one of those days. I went downstairs to find that one of the dogs left me a wonderfully smelly surprise, and it wasn’t very easy to clean up because it wasn’t horribly solid.

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