little feet, big sky

After much thought (all 4 minutes of it), I've decided to move this blog to WordPress. A few reasons...

• No iPhone app. I'd even have been happy with a web app. I've been waiting for this since last year. Bad Blogger, bad.
• Lousy email posting. The formatting always sucks. Period.
• Sloppy web interface. I use external clients to avoid the horror that is using the Blogger web interface. WP feels like a cool breeze by comparision. (Until I find its clunky bits, too, I'm sure.)
• No media storage. This isn't a problem if you use Flickr, but for some bizarre reason, I didn't want to use Flickr with this blog. Had to work around it using Blogo and Picasa. Still no video. *sigh*
• No iPhone app. Hate to cliche, but I live on my iPhone. *shrug*

In case you're wondering, Blogger is so backwards (for lack of a better word) that there isn't even an "export your blog" function. Thankfully, WordPress has that built-in. Nuff said. On a side note, if you're using a Mac - Blogo is an excellent blogging client. Highly recommend it. See ya on WordPress!

Spice hit 7 weeks this past Monday and wow, has it been a wild ride!

They say that colic in babies peaks at 6 weeks and drops slowly from there, and as usual, she's been a textbook baby. Last week was a right mess, hence my impulse trip to see Mom and get away for a while. (Though, considering she came with me, I'm not sure what exactly I was getting away from. Hmm.)

This week has been a little better. The spouse has been a little better, which always helps. I'm sure Spice has been going through a growth spurt because she feeds constantly all day. I used to wonder what that meant. How could a baby feed constantly? Wouldn't they need to come up for air? Or stop to sleep? In case you've wondered these same questions, the answer is, in fact, no. They can pause long enough to stare past you out the window for a few minutes and as soon as you reach to pull your shirt back down, they latch on with a vengeance. They are capable of disarming you with a half-smile, breathing through the corners of their mouth and then lazily feeding for another 20 minutes. And sleeping works about the same: cat-nap for a bit with the breast in the mouth and wake up as soon as they're moved or wake up an hour later to start all over again. I've never been so damn repetitious in my life; "She can't possibly be hungry again!"

But I was rambling about fussiness.

In the breastfeeding support group I was going to, the bible seemed to be Harvey Karp's The Happiest Baby on the Block ($11). I remember seeing this on Amazon a few times, but skimmed past it thinking that since it was so mainstream, it couldn't possibly be worth the $11 bucks. Ah, how wrong I frequently am. :-) The same day that I read it, I tried the 5 steps in the book and was amazed at how calm Spice was. And I also realized that we had been doing many of these steps unintentionally, but with the same calming results.

The 5 steps are basically swaddling, side/stomach positioning, swinging, shhh'ing and sucking. If you've been around babies before, it's nothing new, but Karp's technique is to put them together in a way that makes them more effective than each used alone. We had been swaddling occasionally with good results. Swinging was effective when I was wearing her in a wrap/sling. Sucking worked on the breast and with co-sleeping and nursing at night, we sleep on our sides, tummy-to-tummy. Her body is tucked so tightly against me, that it's almost like being swaddled. No wonder nights have been so easy for us!

Do read the book. Spice is a relatively easy baby, meaning she often cries for food, a diaper change, or needing to sleep, and rarely for random fussiness or real colic. For the times she has actually been fussy, Karp's technique has been a sanity-saver.

If you don't want to plunk down the $$, read it in your local library or rent it from Paperspine.

As happy as I am with cloth diapering, there's been something that's bugged me for weeks. I finally found a solution to the problem though...

The easiest way to cloth diaper with a wrap is to fold the prefold into thirds and lay it into a diaper wrap. Unfortunately, this method also often results in a poopy wrap. Poopy wraps mean they have to be washed and dried, and since I'm a lazy one, this means with the next load of diapers, though more enterprising moms could easily hand wash and line dry them. The most poop-proof solution is to secure the prefold with pins or a snappi and then secure the wrap. I don't remember a single poopy wrap while using this method. However, the downside is the extra step needed in pinning or snappi-ing, especially when in a rush, in the middle of the night in an almost dark room, or in the back seat of a car on a wriggly baby. :-) I tried the trifold-layed-in-wrap for just these situations, but they seemed to make the problem worse; it's incredibly frustrating to have a messy, leaky poopy wrap to clean up and put away when you're on the road.

A few days ago, I tried a new fold: the bikini twist. I thought it seemed really flimsy when I first looked at it, but it works great! You simply lay the baby on the prefold, bring the front up between their legs, twist it 180 degrees and voila! I keep the wraps & prefolds ready to go, so that I can slip them under her bum at the same time and just close the wrap to secure without pins or snappis. The twist forms a "poop pocket" in back that keeps the poop in the prefold about 90% of the time, which is pretty good, and the twist in front fits trimmer between the legs with more absorbency than a newspaper fold.

I wish I'd thought of this ages ago! :-)

Bear in mind that I have three babywearing apparatuses: a Mamma's Milk pouch sling, a custom Oh My Mommy Clementine mei tai and a brown Moby wrap. Spice was fine in the Moby for the first couple of weeks, but the Moby is a crazy piece of work to quickly throw on and go, since it's so incredibly long and drags on the ground. Plus, I'm sure I could get the hang of it with time, but unless I had someone to straighten the wrap on my back so it wasn't bunched up, it was seriously uncomfortable to wear more than an hour - a huge negative for a sling that's so much work to get on and off.

The pouch sling is pretty good all around. Mamma's Milk makes one of the few adjustable pouch slings, with hidden velcro so that there's no rings, buckles, etc. Again, Spice was okay in it the first few weeks in the cradle hold, but fights it like a mad woman now. I've tried her in the tummy-to-tummy position, but she screams and claws at my chest and neck until I take her out. Finally, yesterday we had some degree of success with a careful facing-out position. I know you're not supposed to have a newborn facing out, but she was half sideways, has good head control and was tucked in bum-first, with her feet lotus up. She could lean against me, and it worked well enough to get her from the breastfeeding support group to the car with one hand free. I'll keep trying her in it, because it's by far the fastest to grab and put on. And I'm holding out for using it for hip carries when she gets bigger.

My newest addition is a custom mei tai I bought on Etsy. A mei tai is an ABC (Asian-style Baby Carrier), generally a square/rectangle of cloth with four straps sewn on. Two straps tie around your waist and the other two go over your shoulders, cross at the back, come forward and tied around the baby's back (newborn) or under their bum (toddler). Basically, it's like an Ergo without all the bling. I bought the spouse the Ergo and it's gotten virtually no use because a) he doesn't remember/want to use it and b) it's got too much bling. I hate things with buckles and stuff, so I wanted a mei tai. By far, BabyHawk has some of the coolest fabrics and some of the best reviews, but I wasn't about to drop $115 on Yet Another Carrier that Spice would scream at. Thankfully, there's Etsy, home of Lots of Cool Things made by SAHMs at Low Prices. I browsed around and settled on a cute custom mei tai with a pink/white/brown stripe pattern and black straps. After some confusion on my part in regards to how many mailboxes I have outside my house, it arrived and Spice screamed each time I put her in. Joy. Until it occurred to me to make it a little shorter by folding up the bottom and putting her in again facing out, bum in first. Success! I carried her around for about 10 minutes like that until she started to fuss. No point in pushing my luck, right?

But the swing. *sigh*

I want to carry her, my precious little bundle o' joy, but she just won't stand it! Bleah. And there's only so much in-arms I can do without having at least a hand free, so.. we got a swing a couple of weeks ago. I felt super guilty about it, until I accepted the fact that this is not a battle - it's about her being happy and comfortable. I almost always try to soothe her to sleep in my arms, but sometimes she's just too cranky and tired and keeps fussing. I tuck her into the swing, pop it on the fastest speed and put some lullabies or white noise on, and she's asleep faster than a drunken me passing out on the bed. She's not going to be 10-years-old and needing to swing herself to sleep, right? And I keep trying the different slings every week since she seems to go through phases of what she likes.

But in the meantime, I still hate the swing.

I'm up in Salinas visiting my mother again - this time with Spice in tow. I flipped out yesterday as the spouse and I were trying to get Spice her passport and realized I just needed to get away for a little bit and my own mother was the best solution. I packed her "big" diaper bag, a back pack for me, her cloth diapers & wraps and her swing. *sigh* The swing... I hate the damn thing, but the car just won't start without it, you know...

Driving up with Spice was a nightmare! First, I got on the road a little too late, around 3pm. Counting the slow through Santa Barbara on the 101 with afternoon traffic, and the smazillion cops pulling people over, I started to panic over driving with her after dark. At it was, we were stopping randomly for diaper changes and nursing, and I wasn't too picky about where to pull over, but after dark? Even worse, as I got past Paso Robles, I noticed that there weren't too many town-like areas to stop, just miles and miles of farmland. Add to that, Spice was getting tired of the constant driving and would cry for 20 minutes and quiet for 5-10, then start all over again. I was hysterical and in tears by the time we got to my mother's. :-(

But today is a new day, and as moms seem to make things better, mine did, too. Good cozy sleep snuggled up together has wiped the slate clean for both me and Spice and she's napping in her swing quite happily. *sigh*

She's really so cute when she's not screaming. :-) She half-smiled at me for the first time a couple of days ago in the bath. (She really likes her baths.) And then yesterday before we hit the road, she smiled at the spouse, while grabbing at his hair. This morning won me over, though. After eating, she sat and smiled these big open-mouthed smiles at me, with little gurgle sighs in between. Ahhh. So freakin' cute.

It's hard to believe she's just 6 weeks old. A month and a half. She's so alert and engaged, and since I'm obviously biased I have to say that other people notice it too. :-) As much as I wanted to take an international trip to see my grandmother, I'm starting to feel bad about taking her so far from the spouse for so long, especially while she's breaking into new ground every day. It just wouldn't be fair, even if he is super-tied up with some of our business stuff right now.

Well, off I go for now. Told mom I'd tidy up her resume for her this morning.

So the gDiapers with cloth inserts didn't really work out for Spice. In fact, the gDiapers themselves haven't really worked out, sadly. They're okay for wet ones and super trim, but leak consistently with poopy breastfed blowouts. The worst part is the cleaning; toss the insert, either handwash the liner and wait for it to dry, or wash it with cloth diapers and have it be out of commission until the next load. God forbid it leaks, ad then you have the cover out for wash, too. None of which sounds impossible for the average cloth-diapering parent, until you factor in that you should have about 4-6 covers on hand and that they cost about $12 - $18 each... about the same or more than a quality cloth diaper cover! (A bumGenius one-size AIO is $18.)

I now have a great stash of Thirsties and Litewraps which are working out fantastically. I have a ton of gDiaper inserts left over, so I cheat and line a cloth diaper with one at night for better absorbency. I noticed that lots of people trifold the prefold and just lay it in the wrap, but this ALWAYS ends up in a poopy wrap for us, so I do a newspaper fold and snappi, then put the wrap on. If I'm good with my folding, I only have to wash a cover every 2 days. :-) Maybe later today I'll try a jellyroll fold. I have two steel stepcans next to the changing area, a small one for the gDiaper trash and a large one for the cloth diapers. We have a large stash of cloth wipes, a wipes warmer and use Kissaluv's Diaper Lotion Potion, with good results. Cloth is just so much easier! Spice hates being wet, so frequent changes happen anyway.

If you're thinking of trying cloth diapers, I can't stress enough the need to try out different brands of wraps, pocket dipes and AIOs. For example, Bummis are really well reviewed everywhere, but I hated them; they felt plastic-y on the outside and the velco was rough and dug into Spice's legs. The Proraps were almost as bad and just felt cheap. On the flipside,Imse Vimse is the softest one I have and the Litewraps second. Getting one of each let me try them and figure out which to get more of. I also wouldn't recommend buying up sizes in advance. The bumGenius 3.0 (one size) we have worked great when her poop was tiny, but it's leaked twice with blowouts, so it's at the bottom of the stash right now. I'll try it more as her pooping schedule lightens up later. My sister gave us some Kushies she had never used, but those also leak a little on blowouts. I'm learning not to trust anything that doesn't have a leg gusset!

I went to the breastfeeding support group at the Pump Station on Vine this afternoon and was so glad that I did. I don't think Spice and I are really having too much trouble, other than the constant spitting up and my worrying that it was something I ate, but it was so nice to be around other new moms going through the same things. More than I realized it would be.

The class at the Vine location is Mondays and Tuesdays at 1pm for 0-4 month-olds. The first class is free; after that, they're $15/each. The women seemed quite diverse and there's a lactation consultant running the meeting to answer any questions, etc. I have to admit, she did a good job of answering questions textbook-style and then opening the conversation for everyone else to offer tips or advice. It was great for encouragement and support, especially for some of the women who seemed to think their problem (ie. nursing constantly, milk supply, etc.) was theirs alone.

Almost three weeks and I've left the house only a handful of times. Spice is doing good, gaining weight well and such. Our pediatrician put it well; "medically speaking, she's a very boring baby".

Talked to a counselor today about the baby blues. She said I was very high functioning, and was a very mild case, which is fine by me. Anything to stay off of meds. I just need much more sleep and need to eat more. (I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight in less than two weeks.)

The spouse is exhausted, too. We're considering hiring a postpartum doula to help us catch up on sleep and eating until we can get our feet back under us.

It's strange, though. I don't feel tired and yet I haven't gotten more than one stretch of sleep longer than 4 hours in almost three weeks. Amazing what the mind can trick itself into...

I've figured out to play Aurora Feint one-handed while nursing. Great graphics, incredible play with the accelerometer and perfect for semi-mindless entertainment. Would love to blog more about it, but in the meantime, if you have an iPhone or iPod touch, you should check it out. Free, from the App Store.