Tag Archives: baby

Trying to Get Cloth Diapering Started

As I posted after she was born, Selene is a very small baby. Or perhaps I should say was. Little rascal has quite the appetite, and she’s not so tiny anymore.

She might even fit into the bumGenius diapers we have for her at last.

That’s what I’m trying out today. First time I put one on her, even as tight as I could get it, she just swam in it. Tiny, tiny baby girl! We

My mother is rather surprised that we’re doing cloth diapers, but she understands the bit about saving money. She was worried about the water use, though. A good point, but I got a great tip from a reader that I’ll be trying to save on water when I wash the diapers. She suggests soaking the diapers in the wash for a half hour, rather than doing multiple cycles. I sure hope it works for me! Thanks, Deoxy!

The diapers are fitting a bit better now. I don’t have a scale to say what she weighs now, but I would have to guess at least 7 pounds.

One challenge we’re facing is that our little miss is a queen of futile diaper changes. Yes, she’s one of those who manages to save up for just after you change her. Or during. Those are… umm… fun too, really….

Obviously that can be a bit of a hardship with cloth diapers. We’ve gotten better at catching when she’s really ready for a change, rather than just getting started, and I hope this will keep the number of quick changes down.

I know we’ll still end up using some disposable diapers. There’s pretty much no way my mother-in-law will put up with cloth. Since she is a highly willing babysitter once baby can take a bottle, there’s only so much complaint I can have about that. Doubly so since she usually buys her own diapering supplies.

I have to say, Selene looks awfully cute in a cloth diaper. It makes getting her dressed a bit more interesting, fitting her clothes over the diaper, but I can deal with that. I just like being able to cut down so much on waste.

The 3 Rs with a Baby, Part 3: Recycle

Just as in the rest of life, recycling that which you can’t reuse is important. If you’re good at reducing and reusing, you can cut down the need, but odds are you’re going to have to recycle a fair number of items.

Recycle

Perhaps the most obvious thing you can recycle with a baby would be the baby food jars. That glass is so easily recycled is one of the reasons aside from BPA concerns to choose glass jars when you buy baby food. Of course, if you’re making your own baby food you won’t have a lot of jars to recycle. But there are times for most parents when jarred food is a simpler choice.

There’s also a site called BabyEarth.com that offers recycling of those things you don’t feel are worth reusing. I haven’t tried it, but the plan looks good. They break the goods apart and send them for appropriate recycling. If something is, in their opinion, still usable, they’ll donate it for a family to use.

The 3 Rs with a Baby, Part 2: Reuse

Yesterday’s post covered some of the areas you can reduce what you buy for baby. It’s a challenging topic, but very worthwhile. Today’s topic is in many ways one of the easiest:

Reuse

There are just so many things you can reuse with a baby. Their needs are pretty simple, and many baby items can go from child to child to child with no problem at all.

This is particularly true among friends and extended family. You can cut down the cost of having raising a baby as well as the environmental impact if you’re fortunate in available handmedowns.

Baby clothes are the classic, especially in the smaller sizes that tend to be all too prevalent as baby shower gifts. So many outfits get worn once, maybe twice, maybe not at all before baby outgrows them.

If you’re lucky, you have handmedowns, and plenty of them.

CPSIA has made buying used baby items potentially more difficult. No one is quite sure what’s happening there, or what the one year delay really means, if anything. So many statements made have a note at the bottom that they may not be the official position of the CPSC, making it impossible to tell if they mean it or not.

Hopefully things will clear up soon in favor of making it easily possible to reuse appropriate items for children.

Don’t Forget…

Someone else can probably reuse the items your baby used. Keep the cycle going as long as each item is worth reusing.

The 3 Rs with a Baby, Part 1: Reduce

Having a baby means you start using a lot more things. You can’t help it. Babies have a lot of needs. But you can do your best to keep things under control. This week is about keeping up with the the three R’s with an infant in the house.

Anyone with more ideas is welcome to share.

Reduce

This is a difficult one in some ways, as having a baby means you will have a lot of new needs. You aren’t going to be able to avoid it all. But you can cut back, way back, on what people say you need for a baby.

Reuse is the easy way, but today we are looking at reduce.

I posted last month about things I feel you don’t need for a new baby. Not everyone will agree with the list, but it’s a place to start thinking.

Things I didn’t find useful included changing tables, multiple strollers and walkers. There’s more, but you can read it there.

If it works for your family, cosleeping also lets you reduce the things you need for baby. You can probably skip the cradle and maybe even the crib, depending on how dedicated you are to the idea. It works great for many families, but others struggle. Do what works for you.

Another key step to reducing what you get for a baby is taking control of baby showers and such. This is difficult, since you aren’t generally the one throwing the party, but if your registry is under control it will help. Better yet is if you can talk to whoever organizes the shower so that you can encourage simplicity and maybe even encourage used gifts in appropriate categories.

When your baby is old enough, making your own baby food is a great choice. You’ll cut back on waste by not buying so many jars of baby food. You will, however, need some other supplies.

With my first too, I used a baby food food mill once my babies were old enough for food that wasn’t completely pureed. It worked great, and I’ll be using my food mill again this time. I had one of the KidCo mills.

But I also want to use our blender to create my own pureed food, and then freeze it in blocks for use. BPA free baby food trays are getting easier to find, making it simpler than ever to make your own baby food.

There are a lot of things to be careful about with making your own baby food. You have to be very careful about food contamination. Wholesome Baby Foods has some great resources to help you figure out how to make baby food safely for your infant. I’ll be looking at keeping our current VitaMix blender in condition to be safe. I’d prefer to not have to buy something just for the purpose of making baby food when I have a good blender at home already. That would make a bit of a mess of the whole point to reducing.

Reduction is one of the hardest areas to come up with ideas specific to having a new baby, I think. Reuse, tomorrow’s topic, is in many ways much simpler. There are so many things that can be handed down from child to child.

Baby Selene is Here!

Yes, I had my sweet baby girl about a week and a half ago. Finally I have the energy to post about it. I’ve barely been on the computer at all lately!

She was born on January 30 by C-section. I really had hoped for a natural child birth, but as things turned out, she was breech and the C-section was the best option to go with. Such is life. I’d rather have a healthy baby than the most perfect birth plan followed.

The C-section went just fine. I even watched part as one of the lights happened to be so oriented that I could see what was going on. Didn’t tell the doctors that because I wanted to be able to see, and I figured they might move it if I said a word.

There’s something really special about seeing your baby being born, even if it is by a C-section. Thank goodness for epidurals so I didn’t have to think about what all was going on.

She’s a little thing for a full term baby, a mere 5 lb 9.7 oz and 18.5 inches long. Just a tiny bit bigger than her month preemie brother. It’s so much like holding a doll picking her up, especially since my first was 8 lb 10 oz.

I do consider there to be one advantage to that C-section, however. I had already signed the paperwork to get my tubes tied. No more birth control worries!

That was something we had planned. If I had succeeded in the VBAC I wanted, it would have been my husband’s problem, shall we say. But with a C, much simpler to have things tied off and be done with it.

No more considering hormonal birth control or other methods. I really am delighted about that even with the occasional “OMG I will never have another baby” twinge. I know I don’t want or need more children.

She’s great at breastfeeding. In less than a week she put back much of her birth weight, despite having lost close to 10% of it while we were in the hospital. Considering how low her weight is, that was a real relief to me.

She sleeps. I mean really sleeps. Wakes up once a night already. Once in a while twice in the night, but she’s my first good sleeper. Since she’s growing so well I really don’t mind.

Bit by bit I’m feeling better myself.  I really detest incision pain, and I’ve been lucky enough to have tons of help from family. But I’ve been feeling the urge to get some work done again while Selene naps beside me, so here I am.