Still Rockin The Cloth!

My extreme exhaustion & all-day morning sickness have subsided a bit, making cloth diapering not seem like such a daunting task. I really honestly still think that cloth diapering is the best option for us.

Which leads me to believe that if I'm able to do it, so can you!!!! :-D I mean, what would it hurt to at least give it a try for a couple of weeks? A month? Just take it day-by-day.... That's how I find things to be easiest, when I'm not feeling cornered & pressured to do something.

If I know I have an "out", the option to quit, that makes me feel more open to giving things a chance.

We spent around $100 on our cloth diaper stash. That will last us for years, no problem, for one child. It could probably last me for years with two little ones, but I'd probably end up having to wash diapers every day that way. Right now I'm washing them every other day.

Each week I go to the store & just can't possibly justify spending money on disposable diapers anymore. It just feels like flushing precious money down the drain.

So what's stopping you from giving them a try?

Beware Of The Hormone-o-Saurus Rex!

I have made the transformation from being a loving, caring, thoughtful & giving wife and mommy into a ravenous, hormonal, (dare I say) raging bitch.

I hate this. I really do. I feel like I'm one of those Pull My String & I Can Talk dolls. Only my phrases are "I'm so friggen hungry", "What the hell are you doing/talking about" & "Baby, I am so, so, so sorry. I really am. I love you so much". Oh. And "Turn on a fan! I'm burning up in here!"

The extreme exhaustion seems to have diminished a great deal. I'm still tired, don't get me wrong, but at least I'm not too tired to run to the bathroom to pee anymore. Every five minutes.

I am, however, hungry at almost any given time during the day. My cravings are....fickle & all over the place. Yesterday I had a bowl of Golden Puffs cereal. Along with a bowl of Ramen noodles. Usually, after ranting & raving about how hungry I am, I eat about 3.5 bites & am stuffed. It's a mystery to my family. But they have learned to NEVER EVER EVER eat any of the food that "I couldn't possibly eat another bite of."

Because, like a deranged hyena, I will be back.

And I will be hungry.

My threshold of tolerance for idiots has also been severely lowered.

I am in no mood to entertain your stupidity, so please don't push your luck.

So....yeah. LOL That's how I've been. ;-)

What's new with you?

No Rest For The Weary

Being a mommy is a hard enough job, but add to that the woes of having 3 sick babies & its enough to bring tears to your eyes.

Especially when she's sick, too.

And in that bone-weary, energy-sucking butt dragging time of pregnancy called "The First Trimester".

So far, one of my chicks has gotten better (after missing a week of football practice & his game!) but I've still got two that are still suffering through.

The baby is the worst. He's super congested plus has a bad runny nose. He is having trouble sucking on his pacifier and nursing. He spends hours crying and basically being miserable.

I'm hoping that he's about over it, because my nerves are frayed & my body and mind are wiped out.

I've even given up on cloth diapers for the time being. I don't have the energy in me to do anything extra. Just the basics.

I'm too wore out to even consider myself a sell-out. LOL

We'll go back to cloth really soon. Just let me catch my breath. ;-)

Oh! I looked up the Chinese Gender Predicting Chart today. It is reported to be 93% accurate. It just needed my age at time of conception along with the month I conceived. It said that my baby is a.....girl! I've been feeling that its a girl, but only time will tell.....

****UPDATE****

This morning we had a HORRIBLE blowout with a disposable. Soooo we're back to the awesome wonders of cloth! Woohoo!

Laundry, Morphine, Wanting To Poo & Other Exciting Adventures

Sorry I've been MIA lately. It seems like its been one thing after another & I'm finally able to come up for a gulp of air! But that's life with kids, right? ;-)

First I was sick with a nasty cold & then each of my chicks came down with it. Then back on Thursday night around midnight, I woke up with a horrible pain in my stomach & back. By 7 am & no sleep & unrelenting pain, I told my husband that we should probably go to the ER.

I figured it'd be an in & out trip. I was so embarrassed that they may send me home with a mere diagnosis of a bad case if gas. I've known several pregnant women who've gone to the ER thinking there was something wrong & turned out they just had a big ol' air bubble that needed turned loose.

Heck, I know at least one woman who went to Labor & Delivery when her water broke but it turned out that she had merely peed her pants.

I did not want to be one of these women.

I took 5 Gas-X tablets hoping to free some hidden beast within, but it was to no avail. We woke the kids & headed towards the hospital.

Along the way, stuck in rush hour/going to work & school traffic, wedged between a Lexus, a full school bus & a Suburban, I puked in a wonton soup take-out container.

Have I mentioned how glamorous my life is?

Now, for the sake of your boredom & my fear of losing half my followers, I will skip over the boring trivial parts.

Basically all's they found was a UTI (urinary tract infection). But they did a quick ultrasound to check on my little bean baby! I had no clue how small they can be! But there, in black & white, was my 6 wk 2 day old baby with a strong heartbeat! No sign of distress, thank God!

The Dr put me on an IV because I was slightly dehydrated, along with something for the nausea and MORPHINE for the pain!

I have never had morphine before but mainly worried about the safety of my Baby Bean and my little nursling. They reassured me that it was fine to have the morphine, so they added that to the IV.

All was fine. I thought. I was pain-free & relaxed. But I was totally unprepared for what happened next. The morphine high. I had fallen asleep & when I woke up, I was g-o-n-e. I could see everyone & hear everyone but they sounded a million miles away. I could barely move. I thought I was dying.

But my responsibilities as a breastfeeding momma did not cease just because I was high as a kite in a hospital bed. Austin was hungry. Bored. And pissed. Very pissed. I was slacking on the job & he let everyone know how unacceptable that was.

I drunkenly tried to roll to one side & push one side of my bra down, while Antonio tried to position Austin next to me. Austin latched right on. His eyes rolled back in his head in ecstasy. I had to smile.

As the nurse came in to check my vitals for the last time & get me ready to leave, she discovered that my blood pressure had dropped. Low. Really low.

Luckily they were able to get it back up by hooking me up to another bag of fluids, but what I thought was going to be an in-and-out trip to the ER, ended up being an 11 hour ordeal!

But I'm home now & fine.

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Cloth diapers. We have transitioned to pretty much full time cloth diapering. And we are loving it! I've found that I mainly prefer prefolds (the unbleached Indian ones). They are much more absorbant than my flats & the poop seems to shake off easier in the toilet. We have not had any leaks yet! And we've had some messy diapers. I mean, loose, filled-to-the-brim full poopy diapers! LOL The worst that's happened was the poop got into the leg gussets of the cover, but the cover held it all in! It was amazing! I can definitely say that had he been wearing disposables at those times, we definitely would've been cleaning up some nasty blow-outs!

The only downside, really, is that we only have 4 covers, so that when the poop gets on the cover, we have to rinse the cover then toss it in the diaper pail. Because of those few messy diapers, I had to wash a couple of extra loads of diapers this week. But it really was no trouble at all. I just wash them once in hot & do an extra rinse. I hang the covers to dry but toss the diapers in the dryer for 90 minutes. Done!

For nighttime diapers, though, I have found that a tri-folded flannel receiving blanket with a washcloth folded inside of it works great. It's super soft, not bulky & very absorbant!

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Shampoo. I believe its been 3 wks since I last shampooed.

I admit: I miss it. I miss the sweet fragrance. I miss the bubbly feeling of sudsing up in the shower. I miss using styling products.

But I have made a commitment to do this for at least six weeks.

My hair isn't looking worse than usual, in terms of cleanliness. I have faith that this is the healthier option for my locks.

But I do think that I'm going to start using styling products, at least on weekends. I miss my curly hair.

Here We Go.....Again! Woohoo!

So the puzzle pieces have been assembled & a blessing has been revealed!

I should have known when my clothes started getting tight on me.

But I chalked it up to my cooking more pasta lately.

I cried to my husband that I looked pregnant in my nightgowns.

I chalked my late period up to stress.

But the heartburn? There is only one occasion when I get heartburn...but....no...couldn't be that...

My juice cravings? Hmmmm...... I had those not too long ago....

But deep down, I knew.

And I was excited.

I mentioned my suspicions to my husband & he smiled.

We decided to wait to buy a test on the weekend. At night, we lay in bed & fantasized about the possibility of having another baby.

Were we crazy? Austin is only 8 months old!! He's still breastfeeding & isn't sleeping through the night yet. We had to be crazy to be this excited.

By Friday night, the suspense was killing us. I bought a twin pack of pregnancy tests. I figured I'd take one that night & if it turned out "negative", I would take the other one in the morning.

Turns out that it took just one test. 10 seconds & I had my two beautiful pink lines!

We're having a baby!!

Baby #4!!!

So add "tandem nursing" & pregnancy anecdotes to Hippy Chic Momma's roster!

Back To Co-Sleeping...With A Twist!

As you all know, (by "all", I mean the one bored person that happens to read my blog. When they have nothing better to do. LOL) we recently put together Austin's crib.

We had good nights (sleeping through the night...with only one middle-of-the-night nursing session) and we had bad nights (wanting to nurse every 2 hours plus crying bouts due to teething).

The "bad nights" outweighed the good.

And I was getting tired. Exhausted. Slightly angry.

I prayed for an answer.

I know God heard my prayers, but I swear I heard Him chuckle a few times ("hahaha! She *said* she wanted a baby! Hahaha! Wonder if she'll still be wanting more after a few more weeks of this...").

Yesterday, I had an epiphany.

Okay, so it was really a blog post that I read on FaceBook.

But epiphany sounds so much more grand, doesn't it?!

It was instructions on how to convert your crib into a co-sleeper! Basically, you just remove the side if the crib that slides up & down, secure the crib to your bed (they used heavy duty bungee straps) & (after a few more slight adjustments) there you have it!

A co-sleeping crib!

Out of sheer desperation, we rigged ours up last night. We still need to do a few tweaks, but it worked like a dream!

Now my husband, I and Austin each have enough space to stretch out PLUS we're still co-sleeping!

I love the internet! LOL

Here's the co-sleeping crib tutorial & info page, if ya want it: http://www.drmomma.org/2010/01/turn-your-crib-into-cosleeper.html

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Lovin' My Pad (fold)!

A million fluffy thanks to Tara West for her suggestion to go with a pad fold!!

You, my dear Tara, have saved me from a mountain of stress & fingers full of needle pricks! LOL

See, I had been doing some basic folds with my flat diapers. I loved how they looked, fitted & old fashioned, but Austin was refusing to lie still.

He had places to go, things to gnaw on & a very limited capacity for my artistic ways.

Most of yesterday's diaper changes ended in blood (mine), sweat & tears (those latter two came from both he & I).

Til Tara suggested that my newbie ass should look up the pad fold. Granted, Tara is kind & refrained from either calling me a "newbie" or mentioning "ass", but I read her loud and clear! ;-)

The "pad fold" is super easy:

a.) Fold the diaper in half & then in half again, so the diaper is a square shape.

b.) Fold both the right & left sides into the middle, so its tri-folded.

c.) Fan the back out slightly more (to catch poo) & place seam-side down in a diaper cover.

d.) Snap (or velcro) the cover onto baby!

Voilá! No pins or Snappis are necessary!

You can even put an insert inside the diaper's fold, for a few extra layers of absorption! I might buy some terry cloth this weekend & make a few inserts.

Today's thoughts on cloth diapering? It freaking rocks!!!

Oh! By the way, those cloth wipes I was making? They work beautifully! I just wet one down with water (like a washcloth) & use it like a regular wipe. Then, just toss it in the diaper pail with the dirty cloth diapers!

If I end up buying some terry cloth, I might sew some onto the back of some of my wipes, that way they are really great for really messy diaper changes!

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