Unwellness

cloth diaper gurus, again - help?

We have made our first tentative forays into using our pocket diapers and... his fricking clothes don't fit.

We are fond of how, in one night, his diaper rash looks a bit better. We think they are very cute as a concept. We dislike the environmental impact of disposables. We want to do a combo of cloth with disposables for travel and big days out. But we also want his clothes to fit.

Am I doing something wrong? I went back and many of you said pockets are supposed to be LESS bulky than the other kinds of cloth diapers. What the hell? This is some bulky, big butt we have going on. We hate the way it looks!

We are ready for the next level, if it will help us.

Primer, please, on prefolds and fitteds. Can they help the bulk issue? And if not, will they at least not be worse? We are not as intimidated by them as we used to be and we like the organic cotton idea.

I am especially drawn to Imse Vimse. I pretty much want to buy those plus some sort of prefolds + Bummis package so we can try all our options. Undoubtedly I will get a combo of contour and fitted, but I'd love some input. And how the heck do you wash the covers? And how often? You really don't have to wash them every time? Tell us what we need to know, as you always do, wise diaper freaks. Many thanks in advance.

how we are doing, really

I will just tell you -

it is HARD to live in your bedroom for weeks and weeks on end.

OK. We are really living in roughly 600 square feet, which is bigger than a hell of a lot of NYC studio apartments. So it's not the size of the space. It's the fact of no living room area and no kitchen. And an office area that is the most chaotic and disorganized we've ever, ever been in our lives. During a time when each day calls for a zillion tiny renovation decisions and details and phone calls and the referencing of elusive slips of paper. And at a time in our lives when technology needs to be easy and quick and simple, not requiring the digging for cables and wires and plugs to share videos of your baby son with his grandparents (I still haven't found the cable to connect the video camera to the computer, and the camera charger is totally MIA). There is so much frustration with the office area alone. So much that we got in a really big fight in Container Store last weekend while trying to devise an organizational system. That place has been the site of more of our fights, I swear. I think it's something about a Research Chief and a Librarian trying to be married to each other - the organizational issues are chock full of landmines since we each think we know best.

Anyway, it is HARD living in this space with no kitchen. It is much, much, much harder than it was to live downstairs in our living room and kitchen, even considering the Hideous Bathroom That Was. We had easy access to our basement then, for one thing. The cats spent the majority of their time down there. And most importantly, we could get to the backyard. I could let the dogs out. Now they are all stuck in two rooms and a hallway with me all day long. And, of course, we didn't have a baby for most of the time we lived downstairs. That's a big difference, too.

I am sick of eating out. I am sick of take out. I am sick of having an extremely limited selection of food available to me all day because the fridge is a tiny dorm-like one. I go out every day, and that's great, but when it's super hot or I have mastitis, it can be tough.

On top of the tight quarters and the inability to escape each other or the pets, I am adjusting to the mom thing. I have fallen hard and I love the little sucker. I want to hold him and hug him all the damn time. Until I don't. Until it is 7:30 and Wes walks in the door and I realize that instead of being able to hand him off and run out screaming, I need to have Wes do all the things that couldn't be done all day - the dogs have to be fed and walked right away (he does take the baby for this), and there are contractor decisions to make and renovation errands to run that can't wait. There hasn't been any effing time for anything.

Amid this, Wes does an amazing job. He gets the baby off me as much as he possibly can. Still I am sometimes left at the end of my rope with a sore back from walking the two rooms while bounce-swaying with a fever and a screaming baby who can't be fed for an hour because of the thrush medicine. And so, by the time I hand him off, I get extremely low. I get extremely down on myself. I get extremely stupid and start weeping about what an obvious failure I am as a mother. How the fact that I hate those moments and wish I could hide or escape to my old life must mean that I am a selfish whore who is going to ruin my child. How I am obviously not meant for this.

There has been a shift there, you see. I wept for the first few weeks because I was mourning the life I lost and realizing what I had done and wishing I could be the center of my own world again. Now I am weeping because he is so perfect and beautiful and surely I am not good enough.

Progress, I say.

5 days work

From this:

To this:

We love our contractor.

That thing that looks like a countertop is just the panel for the front of the cabinet that is now unfinished. The countertops will be grainte. The floors are concrete which will soon be polished. Please notice the living room  popcorn ceiling, now gone. That was a noisy business. They had to rip out the whole ceiling. Also exciting - when they went to replace the hideous toilet, they found that the whole line was cracked and had to be replaced. It's been... loud.

Beckett Ace, 6 weeks

A photo essay of our last few days in bed amid fever and much nursing and the occasional desperate need to distract the baby for a while by putting him in the Bumbo even though he is technically too young (but look at that head control!):

clogged

My head feels like there are goldfish swimming around in it. I can't remember the last time I had a fever, and I obviously have never tried caring for a newborn with a fever before. Whoo-hoo. Big effing fun.

I finally got hold of my antibiotic prescription - my midwives feel that the fever meant "go straight to antibiotics do not pass go" and I am good with that. Of course, my chances of developing thrush will be high. Lovely. Thank god for acidophilus.

I am searching endlessly now for a whitehead-ish plugged nipple duct. I looked so hard this morning that I got fever-dizzy from looking down for so long. To no avail. I wish I could find it. It sounds right up my alley in the gross department.

I got all freaked out last night that Beck was getting dehydrated because he'd spent the day getting really frustrated at the breast, nursing then fussing then nursing then fussing more then nursing then screaming. He didn't seem to be getting enough. And then he didn't poop for a while and when he did it was green. And then, just when Wes got home and I was ready to start breaking out the bottles of formula, kiddo pooped hugely and normally and continued to do so all night. Not only that, but the day of constant trying-to-nurse must have done the trick because my supply was ample all night and he didn't do any more boob-screaming. Whew.

Gotta go back to the nursing and bleb-searching (did y'all know that's the name of the whitehead thing?) and feverishness.

boob news

Just as the thrush started to clear up, I woke up with a nasty, hot, painful lump in my breast this morning. Massage, wet heat, lots of nursing and pumping. No change. Finally took my temperature and it's almost 102. Lovely.

Waiting for the midwife to call back.

no thanks to charlotte

We spent an extraordinarily obscene amount of money today on photographs of Beckett and of pregnant me.

The photo shoot was her idea, so today I blame her for the dumbstupidcrazy cash we shelled out.

I do realize that I will thank her down the line.

Prints to come to us in 4 weeks or so, except one which we had him rush so we can use it for our birth announcement. They are gorgeous. I cried when he showed them to us. But I must be honest - if I had known that it would cost $50 for each 5x7 I am not sure I would have started down this path. Yowza.

Beckett Ace, 5 weeks

We had his one month check-up yesterday and received the most glowing praise imaginable from the pediatrician:

"Whatever you're doing, just keep doing it!"

Weight: 11lbs 4.5oz
Length: 23.25 inches

THRUSH: Yep.
We're both being treated now. What fun those baby drops are - 3 times a day, we /I have to hold him for a few minutes on each side and can't feed him for an hour afterward - what a fun hour that is... ugh.

At least he's cute, the little yeast factory.

bureaucracy steams him

The DMV is never, ever fun but going with a five week old baby adds a whole new level of unfun.

Our car arrived last night after I waited all day. This meant we could go back to fricking Home Depot (ahhh... has it really been 6 weeks since I saw you last, old friend?) and order our doors at a dumb late hour last night. Huzzah.

Beck, it turns out, DESPISES his car seat when he has to be strapped in and put in the car. He does occasionally stop screaming long enough to whimper quietly in confusion and frustration. But mostly he screams. He screams so much that his whole redheaded body turns bright tomato colored and he sweats. Oh, does he sweat.

So he was a sweaty mess when we arrived at the DMV today, an errand I couldn't put off because the car is here and needs to be registered properly so we don't start getting tickets we can't afford. I tried to let him cool off a bit before sticking him in the Ergo. I thought about the stroller but was nervous about people possibly coming up and touching him - this is the first time we have been in such a crowded place. In hindsight, I might have done the stroller and just fended off any onlookers. As it was, a truly obnoxious little girl came over and tried to stick her hand in the Ergo on my chest so she could touch the baby. I grabbed her little hand and sent her away.

I am normally very patient and amused by such places as the DMV, enjoying the people of so many varying backgrounds and religions and ethnicities coming together for one strange singular purpose. I am normally obscenely tolerant and liberal. Suddenly that has changed.

The fugitive behind me, for example ("Man, what are they going to do? I'm just not going to show up for that motherfuckin court date. What are they going to do, man? Put me in for three months? Hell, I'll do the motherfuckin three months. I'm not showin up, man."), would normally have been colorful and entertaining. Today, with my 5 week old strapped to me, I kept trying to be sure I was not standing anywhere near the area where he might be breathing and I continually covered Beck's head with the hood of the Ergo.

Until I couldn't anymore because the poor dear was just so. fricking. hot. I started to get super, super paranoid. Books talk about SIDS and overheating. I was convinced he was dead every time he stopped moving. I poked him to make him grunt or move. Then I paced and shimmied and swayed to make him stop crying.

An hour in line to get my number and 20 minutes to be called. We got it done.

Then he screamed all the way home. He was downright pale when I brought him inside, stripped him and fed him for as long as he could stand it. His color came right back and calmed me down. Thank heavens. It was starting to get a little scary.

Beckett Ace, 1 month