I heart cloth diapers

The first, and just about only, purchase I made for Baby Wyatt was cloth diapers. A few weeks after we moved to Colorado, we started our research with a “seminar,” if you will. Some store hosted a “class” on cloth diapers, knowing full well that most people around these parts want to save the world but can only picture ratty, gray slits of cloth and sticking our babies with pins by mistake and need some education. Truth.  We attended said class and learned about the new generation of amazing baby booty protection—no pins involved! Then we oohed and aahed around the store yet resisted buying anything from them, ha. So, you can still get your granny’s old school style cloth dipes, but they are updated and have safe, catchy pin-together-without-pointy-parts contraptions and obviously newer, better fabric options. With those, you have to get cute little waterproof cover so your baby’s tinkle doesn’t run through onto…well, everything. The latest and greatest styles, however, involve no pin-like contraptions whatsoever and come with diaper and cover combed into one. They are magical. You rip the whole thing off and wash it as such. Done and done. The ones Hubby and I are into have a “pocket” in which you slide extra inserts of pee and poo-absorbing goodness, if you want. You can even double up when you have a “heavy wetter.” We’ll see if Nugget wants to be one of those, oh boy. This type is the same as the all-in-one deals but I guess they wash and dry easier/quicker because they can be taken apart a little. Easier washing and drying? Win!

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Let’s discuss the idea that perhaps using cloth diapers is not as eco-friendly as it may at first seem. After all you have to wash and dry those puppies, and detergent is bad for the earth and water is a precious resource. Well, friends, it doesn’t matter. Studies show you still make less waste; in places like sunny Colorado you don’t even have to use the dryer. So there. Also, if you are like me, you seriously consider cash flow as a very close second to not using plastic. This is why you should really use cloth diapers: you can get as many as you need for $600. Maybe I’ll spend more because I like them so much. Compare that to the $1500 or $2000 you will spend on ONE child’s crappy disposable diapers and you really cannot argue.

Because there are now so many companies making these amazing plastic-reducing, landfill helping, wallet-friendly diapers, I can spend hours online shopping for the cutest ones and reading all the reviews. It is unfortunate I did not get shopping sooner, but it is fun that I still have to work on our collection. Can you say procrastination? I can! And I do. 

Night Tinkler

Holy Tinkle Batman! I’m normally a very hydrated person, so I don’t mind having to hit the loo throughout the day. Plus, isn’t it a nice break from work? Take a little stroll and stretch a bit? And no one can get mad at you for taking a pee break; what are they going to do, make you wet your office chair? Here’s my problem then: having to get up several times in the night to take a whiz. It helps me remember the weird dreams (Robert Downey, Jr. was there the other night), but it sure detracts from completing REM cycles and the beauty sleep I need. I’ve tried everything I can think of to get over this, but I think it is time to accept that is just is the way it’s going to be for a long, long time. I can’t exactly rationalize dehydrating myself and the Nugget just so I can be more comfortable at night, and I’m not quite at the stage where I feel comfortable buying adult diapers (it sounds kinda great, but in reality would you want to pee yourself and then sleep in it? Poor babies, and unfortunate weak-bladder-types).

I haven’t had too many pee-related complainy-stories yet in this pregnancy, but I can think of a few with Wyatt. For example, Hubby and Doggy and I had a great running loop around the local college campus. It was especially exciting on weekend mornings, after Friday or Saturday night men’s basketball games…Anyway, it got to the point where I knew every bathroom location on the entire map and pre-scheduled at least two pit stops per 35-minute run because I knew I would need them. There’s just not a lot of room in the bladder area when your stomach hasn’t stretched (and then even when it has!) and your body is jiggling around in jogging motion. Once we got to Colorado and he was even bigger, I had to stick to less-populated hiking trails because I knew I would have to take pee-breaks, even if I went before I left home and in the little bathroom hut at the base of the trail.

I would say excessive tinkling is an acceptable trade-off for housing a growing, thriving baby, but man does it waste some time! After all, I could be sleeping instead. 

Dreams: Part 2

Sadly, I find it harder to recall the sexy dreams than the weird baby ones. I’m not saying these are going to come across as Letters to Penthouse V(which, by the way, we “won” in a Yankee Swap this winter) or anything, but I wake up from these dreams feeling that good things would have happened if only I could have slept a little longer, and that makes me happy. The dreams get to the point where flirting and happiness turn into the knowledge that better things are coming, like in college when you finally make a move to walk back to one of your dorm rooms together,…and then I wake up. I was always a little immature I suppose, so it only makes sense that I only “get” this far.

Let’s see: the other night I was in somewhere like a mall, coming up an escalator. Across the room was someone from high school who I sort of had a crush on but never dated or anything. Mostly we did school projects together and just when the flirting got going I went away to boarding school. In this dream I think he had a ski helmet on, and I was excited to walk over and talk to him. I got some butterflies thinking about it. But then he was gone and one of my college boyfriends was there, behind a table, like an information booth-table at a job fair or something, and he had a cowboy hat on and was giving just this big smile that he always had. This big smile made my heart fill up. Sigh. Maybe we waved to each other? I’m not sure, because I walked around the corner and kept going up the next escalator. Something else must have happened, because I woke up with a sly smile of the memories and feeling a little guilty that Hubby doesn’t usually show up in dreams….but I can’t remember the rest. Nuts.

Another one: there was definitely someone famous. Oh, I know, it was Andy Samberg. This one is interesting because I don’t find him attractive. He’s funny, and witty, and I bet he’s smart, and I love SNL Digital Shorts, but he’s kind of short and doofy and I’ve never taken a cheesy magazine off the rack in the grocery store to check out a story about him, if you know what I mean. So, I was on SNL: I used to babysit for the anchor of NBC Nightly News (true), and he thought I was hilarious (false), so he hooked me up with someone on SNL who gave me a cameo on the show with Gwyneth and Cee-Lo which recently aired. And I brought down the house! So at the after party everyone was all over me because I was so awesome. Andy Samberg came up behind me and put his arm around me, like around my shoulders sort of, in a backwards hug that was just friendly and flirty, but then after praising my performance he said some things that were not just friendly and flirty. For some reason we were in a corner of the room that was more like a dressing room, and he made eye contact with me in the mirror and was trying to make me blush. Eek! Again, we didn’t sneak away to get naked or anything, but I woke up with my body feeling like maybe that’s where we were headed…if I wasn’t actually just going down the hall to go the bathroom in my jammies in Colorado. Dang!

Dreams: Part 1

I have heard this before, and I experienced it a little in my last pregnancy: pregnant women have weird dreams. I’m talking about everything from flirting with old boyfriends to random sci-fi, mad scientist style adventures. I’m no psychologist, but I can guarantee that many of my recent dreams have to do with my concern that this time will turn out like last time (i.e. sad baby dreams). Many, many of them make absolutely no sense though (i.e. what is my 10^th grade biology group doing here?). If I could write a book about my dreams, actually sit down after each one and outline what happened so I could fill out the story on paper, I would instantly be on the New York Times Bestseller list. That is not an exaggeration. Maybe I should do that. In today’s Dreams: Part 1, I will share some of the weird baby dreams I have been having. It amazes me that I have yet to dream about babies dying, and that I haven’t woken up sad from any of these dreams, but something about them is so surreal and weird I guess I just know they aren’t scary and realistic.

The first baby dream I had was a long time ago, maybe even like a month ago, just a couple weeks after I found out I was “expecting.” I went to go pee and something weird was, like, sticking out of my you-know. I couldn’t tell what it was, and I know you aren’t supposed to pull stuff out of there (well, maybe tampons), so I sat back on the toilet and waited. After a few minutes I felt something sort of move around a slide out, and this crazy, dried up, crusty thing was just there in my hand. It is so hard to explain. It was sort of like a mummified cat you see in Ancient Egypt museum exhibits. There was a crispy, yellowed umbilical cord sticking out to the left, which makes sense I guess, and the mummy didn’t look like a baby, especially not a human baby, but I figured it was something like that. I don’t know where I put it, but I didn’t feel sad or bad about it, I just put in a maxi-pad in case I started bleeding and I went on with my day. Weird!

Last night I had another good one worth sharing. There have been a few in between, but this one is fresh in my mind. We were out somewhere with our friends who have a 3 year old and a six-month old who was born a week before Wyatt. I think we were at the rodeo because we went there last Sunday. Anyway, I was in charge of the stroller with the baby in it. This baby was not the chubby six-month old; I mean, it was him, but it was like a mini-grown-up-version, like a gnome or something, and he kept getting away! He would somehow get out of the seatbelt thingy, and then somehow leap out of the stroller, and then somehow careen down the hallway until he bumped into something and then I could capture him because he was stunned and writhing on the floor. Man, it was frustrating. Then, suddenly, I was pushing a double-stroller with both kids in it, and we were going down a slope, and I flipped the stroller on its front, and when I picked it up the baby went flying. It was like a cannon shot him 15 feet away (the three year old was just laughing, strapped into place). So his dad was like “Oh my God!,” and I wondered why he was still letting me push them, and he ran over and picked up the baby by one arm and he was just dangling there flopping around by his arm with his big baby bobblehead. What the?!

I have so many more to share, and I am sure I will collect even more as time passes; I’ll be sure to relay the good ones. Some good ones will be exhibited in Dreams: Part 2, which will discuss sexy dreams I have had. 

Home Doppling

I’m not sure Doppling is a verb, but I think it sounds good anyway. It reminds me of German class. (Note: I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, it’s just an observation). So, home Doppling, as one could infer, is the act of using a Doppler at home. I suppose this could be for weather predicting, or some kind of research involving sound travel, but for me it relates specifically to the observation, and hopefully hearing the heartbeat, of Nugget. Hubby got me this incredibly cool Doppler contraption for Christmas; as many gifts tend to be, this one was bought equally for the use of the buyer as the receiver, but that’s okay, really. He needs my cooperation to use it anyway. The directions were definitely made for doctor-types, which makes me wonder how we got a hold of it (and really if we should be using it), but we figured them out enough to see that the heartbeat may be audible around the 10 week mark. Of course we had to try it this weekend, since Nugget hit 10 weeks on some previous weekday. I wasn’t sure I wanted to get my hopes up, considering the giant may looming in the directions, but we slapped some gel on the ol’ wand and gave it a whirl. I know my heartbeat ain’t in the 130s, and I don’t think there should be any other living creatures in my body, so it totally worked!

Now that it works, my problem is that I can’t become obsessed with it. I mean, working part-time leaves a lot of time to mess around with gadgets and Google stuff. Translation: find things to worry about. The key will be not to play with the Doppler every day and not use it in lieu of actual medical attention. Once this baby starts moving I know I can find some other signs of life and goodness, and hopefully not need to check the heart rate as much, but what if this one doesn’t move that much, like Wyatt? I had absolutely no idea he was dead because he never that much told me he was alive; if it’s like that again I’ll be going through tubes—no, tubs—of gel like some whorehouse. But I suppose anything that can ease my mind is worth it, right? Unless of course I find something on Google that tells me too much Doppling is bad news bears…oh dear.

The perils of secrecy

We had to tell our families about Baby #2 between weeks 7 and 8 because they came out to the mountains for the holidays and it would have been SO obvious. Have you read my ode to wine? Yeah, that’s why. But I would have preferred to wait a few more weeks, maybe until 10 and 11for them and another few weeks for everyone else? I don’t know why. Maybe because that’s when we shared last time? After the first ultrasound it was too damn exciting to keep just between Hubby and me; this time I need the support anyway. Squealing to our parents was majorly emotional—for me as much as them—and every time I think of people being excited for us, I get anxious. I’m not a big center-of-attention person (duh) and all those people being happy just freaks me out. Having to share the news about Baby Wyatt’s death was like rubbing stagnant, dirty ocean salt in a ridiculously gross, old, National Geographic science/medicine article (with pictures) wound. I know I should believe I won’t have to do that again…but it’s damn hard.

That’s not the point though. The point is that we are waiting to tell people but finding many perils to said secrecy. I had to tell one of my besties a really long time ago because we share some tough, real things and this should be one of them. Then I had to tell another good friend because she was sooo great to me after Wyatt died; she sent me literally 100 funny emails on October 14^th, his due date, when I feared the worst for myself. Also, she’s pregnant—about five weeks ahead of me—and told me right away so I wanted to return the favor and have someone to freak out with. Then, Hubby told someone over email by accident when he thought he emailed the ultrasound photo to his mum and dad, but really it was to his mum and a friend. Oops! Then I told two of my other buddies because I had this urge to do so; I thought maybe staggering the announcements would help, and they’re so far away and I miss them and want them to be there through it. Then my cousin moved to Guatemala and started a travel blog, and I became one of her “followers,” so I’m pretty sure she’s gonna find out the next time she logs on and researches who the hell Average Josephine is…the list goes on. Add to it the fact that I completely do not trust Hubby’s mother, no father, to keep a secret and we’ll have absolutely three people left to tell when we finally make “the announcement.” Maybe if these accidents keep happening it will be easier to do? Oy it’s stressful. Three weeks until the next doctor’s appointment and said “announcement.” You can do this Average Joey, you can do this.

ps. here is a sweet, accurate drawing of a week 10 fetus.
I think it looks just like me.

what's in a due date?

According to some random statistics, only about 5% of babies are born on their estimated due dates. According to different random online statistics, 35% of babies are born in the week after their due date; this is the most popular week. It seems first time babies tend to be later than other babies, and that gestational age at birth may be somehow genetic (if we believe random online statistics found through Google and other such sources). Since my mom had both my brother and me early and Hubby’s mom had them both late (brother-in-law was 2.5 weeks late, eek!), I’m hoping it’s passed on from the old maternal grandma’s side, if it’s passed on at all. Obviously this exact inherited baby-popper-outer-mechanism would involve only the perfectly incubated babies, those who come into the world when they’re good and ready, not because they or their moms have problems for which nature or medicine deems early arrival necessary. Hmm. My own statistical knowledge is really about stillbirths, which occur in somewhere around 1/170 to 1/200 births. .05%. Lucky me.

Back to the due date: we got one. This nugget’s coming on or before 8/10/11. Doc said he wouldn’t let me go past that due date, and I’m sure as that time approaches I will be more than ready to take him up on that offer. Too bad it’s, like, still seven whole months away. Eesh. Between now and then, I believe I will find and watch the movie Due Date, starring Robert Downey, Jr., and Zach Galifianakis because it looks amazing. Hubby and I died when the commercial came on and it showed Robert Downey, Jr. saying, “Hey, I can’t believe we made it! I could kiss you!” (not an exact quote) and then the other guy with the crazy name gets all giggly and tries to squirm away from the kiss and completely drives off the highway overpass. They don’t die, so it’s funny. Can’t wait. I might even watch it twice.

Bone tired

I feel that I have been bone tired for the past week, but I’ve only really heard that phrase probably once before so I can’t be sure. In order to better explain what “bone tired” means, I checked www.urbandictionary.com to see if they had an enlightening definition (since Google didn’t have one and urbandictionary is funny). They did not; they had a definition for “boner-kill” though, if you are interested.

About being bone tired: it is exhausting! I can barely drag myself out of bed at the quite reasonable hour of or following 8:30am. And I can’t even stay awake for the last, most important five minutes of our nightly episode of 24 (Kim just tried to escape-gasp!), which we start by 8:30pm. Sometimes I make it to bed where I can read a book for a while, but lately I’ve been passing out on the couch with my dinner plate in my lap. Well, not quite, but the couch part is true and it feels like I just ate dinner. The moments between the couch and bed are torture, even though I have to move about 20 feet total and merely brush my teeth, pee, and swallow some pills (I’m already in my jammies, naturally). Forget cleaning dishes at night. Just thinking about the energy it will take to walk the dog each morning makes me want to lie down. It’s pathetic. However, it is quite worth it. Not only am I making a baby, but Hubby totally supports my lying down and sleeping habits. Translation: he takes over the nighttime cooking and cleaning and does not question what many would see as complete laziness. Gotta love him!

I remember having to sleep 12 hours a day last time around at the end of the second trimester (aka 20 weeks from now, oy), but it was split between the most amazing afternoon nap-time ever and regular sleeping hours. Let’s just hope I get some energy at some point between now and then or else nothing will get done around here. Unless Hubby does it…hmm, we might be on to something here…