Poop and Washing it

The last one for tonight. This full time working mom is super tired and I'm sure my grammar and spelling are suffering. Oh and the pic is to show that sporting a cute birthday shirt and a pink diaper, is completely adorable for cake time on your first birthday party.

My baby was exclusively breastfed until 6/7 months old. Those poopy diapers go right into the diaper pail. I use PlanetWise liner bags. (Always making sure that all Velcro tabs are put in place BEFORE you throw them in the pail.) Every other day( can go a day longer, but this routine helps keep me on a schedule), I empty the diaper bag into the wash and then throw the bag into the wash. I don't touch them :) The liners have always come out of the pockets during the cycle (I have a top loading machine).

When she had formula and solids a diaper sprayer is handy. Mine wasn't that great. Spray the poop and then put in the pail. Most of the time I can "plop" it into the toilet.

I use the Bumgenius detergent. I bought a case on sale and still have 4 boxes left and baby is a year! I wash one cycle cold and then a hot wash with an extra rinse. I usually do a scoop of detergent in each cycle. You may not need to do that for the first wash, but you need it for the second. I skipped the detergent on the second wash and my diaper smelled bad!

I have a few wet bags with zippers from PlanetWise for the diaper bag/church and Weekday School. It's good to have two, one to wash one to "wear" (I use this theory for everything not just diapering).

Hang to dry in the sun when at all possible! It helps get rid of stains, bacteria, smells and yeast.

Types of Diapers and Brands

For the first 2 months or so we used a combination of Newborn kissaluvs and disposables. These are fitted diapers, and are great for tiny babies and have a fold down for the belly button. The covers we used were the fitted Thirsties diaper covers. Around 3 months we used one size Bumgenius diapers and the newborn fitted diapers.

Now that our baby is bigger we mainly use one size Bumgenius diapers and fitted Kissaluvs with Thirsties diaper covers.

At night time we add a Hemp Babies liner to the pocket of the Bumgenius. In the Kissaluvs I put the hemp and a Kissaluv doubler on top. I just think the hemp is scratchy.

I order everything I can from CottonBabies. They have free shipping, and they have been good for when I needed refunds and questions in customer service.

First in a Series

This will be first in a series of posts about cloth diapers. In the past year I've told many friends our story of cloth diapering our baby girl this past year. We've even converted people, which makes me happy too. My husband keeps referring to this blog I'm going to start on these things, so here it is. I'm only going to post about what our family does. There are tons of blogs and websites who are dedicated to the subject, and I'll let them go into all the crazy amount choices and advice.
So this post is a quick list of things you'll need to start.

1. 12 newborn diapers, 4ish covers (Really we could have used more, and I might get more for our next baby, but this cut down on disposables for the first 3 months)
2. 24 one size diapers
3. 6 fitted diapers, 2 covers
4. 2 swim diapers
5. diaper sprayer
6. diaper pail
7. 2 diaper bags for pail
8. 2 wet bags for diaper bag/church/day school
9. wipes warmer
10. cloth wipes (Get as many as you can get your hands on, they seem to disappear like socks. We use flannel and cheap baby wash clothes from box stores)
11. cloth diaper friendly detergent

Long time

I realized the blog has been totally neglected, yesterday. One of the girls at church asked if I was going to have a family blog. I said I did, but was unsure what or how that would be different from posting on facebook, and then the whole privacy thing. One of my friends does a blog/website through shutterfly.com, I'm thinking about that so family can order prints of pictures. Just some of the things I pondering as I wait for our little one to arrive... hopefully the luck of my husband, that his dad swears about, will come into play soon and she'll be born sometime this week :)

More Pictures

Here are more pictures of our sonogram on Wed. We'll go over the results with the Midwife on Thurs.

We are continuing our journey with natural childbirth this week, we start our Bradley Method childbirth classes. I'm excited to be around someone one who will believe in my strength, even more than I do right now. Our teacher is also a certified Doula. There are few people who have traveled the same path that I am(here in the US atleast), so support can be hard to come by.

In other news, one of my best friends and I are having a joint baby shower with work friends on Monday. I'm excited, it will be so much fun, especially since we'll be having one together. I'm sure I'll have some cute pictures from that.

Update

Without going into details (upon request only ;) ) the saga of glucose tolerance testing is over. I was glad to hear from the nurse on the phone that "everything looks good."

Now we've bought, gathered, or made most the furniture and accersories for the nursery. I'm pleased with how it will come together. This weekend we're going to try to get the furniture put together, and start getting the room decorated.

We have a sonogram next Wed, because apparently I have a big baby (yeah who knew?) and they want to check up on her. They are mainly talking about changing the due date. So we'll have some new sonogram pictures to post. I'm glad we get to see her again. And I will be double checking that she's still a girl :) .

Everybody loves some good belly pics! 24 weeks...16 more to go :)

Update: Yes, some of the Christmas decorations are still up, but in my defence, they are"winter houses" so I might keep them up until Jan 30th . The morning sickness is finally dwindling away. After almost 20 weeks of going steady with the toilet, we're breaking things off ;) Tomorrow I have my glucose screen for diabetes, and they will go over my sonogram. I'm really nervous, so I'll probably dump my kids on another deaf ed teacher and go early. My baby girl is as much as a wiggle worm as her dad. She also likes to head butt me so that you can feel her head from outside my belly, which really weirds Russ out, me too, but mostly I just laugh because it feels weird and I just push her so she'll move. We starting getting the room together and with my new sewing machine I got with Christmas money, hopefully that will start picking up speed.