Breast is Best {aka I'm an asshole}

In honor of Breastfeeding Month I decided to finally post this blog that I have been kind of sort of working on for the past 6 months or so. Enjoy!
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How do you believe in something with all your heart, and simultaneously fully support not that thing?

How do you find success in something and watch friends struggle with the same thing? 

How on earth do you go about advocating for something and putting yourself out there as a support person, and not feel like an asshole to those that are on a different path?

Basically, how do you avoid being a total asshole when it comes to anything breastfeeding?

I breastfeed my baby. It is a decision I made long before I gave birth, and maybe even before I was pregnant. I truly believe that with the right support and resources most women can have a successful {success as defined by each individual woman} nursing relationship with their littles. 

I have been so lucky that it has worked out for us. Thrush once, jaundice troubles panic at the beginning, a low supply scare, pumping woes, and a few bites here and there. That's the extent of our troubles over the past 15 months. I know so many women who have gone through hell trying to make it work. I know women who never tried. And I support them all. 

This is probably the thing I have struggled the most with since becoming a mom. There is such pressure to take sides on this. I have struggled with how I can encourage/empower/support other moms who want to breastfeed their babies, and how I can balance that level of involvement with supporting moms who don't. I want to shout it from the rooftops that I'm here for you if you need support in making breastfeeding work. And I want to not sound like a condescending jerk when I say I support you if you don't. 

How can I post an article on FB talking about making nursing in public the norm because 'breast is best' and still have friends and family who don't nurse their babies believe me if I say it doesn't matter to me how they feed their baby? That I don't judge them?

And then there is the length of time a mom and baby nurse. Yet another layer of controversy. Some people have a specific goal in mind. Some people don't. Some people quit when they want to quit. Some people quit when baby wants to quit. Personally I didn't think twice about nursing O past the magical 12 month mark. He wasn't ready to be done. I wasn't ready to be done. So we're not done. Someday we will be, and other people might go longer. And that's ok. Other people have stopped much sooner. And that's ok too.

When O was about 3 months old I was at a patio happy hour with friends from work, one of whom had a new baby herself. As I fed O without a cover and she fed her little from a bottle we laughed about how half the place was probably judging me for feeding him without a cover in public and the other half was probably judging her for feeding a bottle. Really...everyone was probably judging us for having our babies at the bar.

{you have a baby at a bar! Sweet Home Alabama...anyone?} 

My point is this: Feed your offspring. Love your offspring. For crying out loud, love other moms. It takes a village, and we need each other.
Knock it off with the judging. Knock it off with the "I support breastfeeding, BUT" mentality. Knock it off with the condescending "oh, you feed your baby formula?"

Know that you cannot actually walk in another mom's shoes and you cannot actually understand her motives or opinions or experiences that shape her path in how she feeds her baby.

Our babies love us for loving them, not for how we feed them.

365 days into our now 470 day journey. See that guy on the far left? Wouldn't have stuck with it if it weren't for him. 

Accidentally Crunchy: Adventures in Baby Led Weaning

I often wonder what our parenting style would be like without the internet. Without all the mommy blogs and the forums and baby WebMD.

Without the internet I almost surely wouldn't have known that skipping purées was an option. I wouldn't have known that we should probably wait until 6 months to feed solid foods. There are probably a million things that would be different in our parenting life if Google wasn't always within arm's reach. 

When I was on maternity leave I had a lot of time to read on my phone while O was nursing. {gasp! I didn't give him my undivided attention, gazing into his eyes while he ate!} One thing I kept seeing over and over was "BLW". Over the next few months I read blogs and Gil Rapley's book about this "BLW" or "baby led weaning" idea and I was sold.

Mike was 100% on board as well, and we decided we were going to do it at home even if daycare insisted on feeding him purées. As it turns out, daycare was 100% on board too. Our pediatrician is very hands off in parenting matters which I enjoy and his only input on O starting solids was to "try to wait until 6 months unless you think he is ready, don't worry about allergies unless you have a family history of them, and no honey."

Since it all seemed to be falling into place I assumed it was surely meant to be the way we introduced solids to O. 

My plan was to wait until 6 months, but about 3 or 4 weeks shy of that milestone O took matters into his own hands. I was eating fresh-from-the-garden cantaloupe {drool} with a fork while holding him on my hip. He reached out, plucked the fruit off my fork, and shoved it in his mouth and started gnawing on it all in one fell swoop.

I was shocked! My baby knew how to eat! I let him go to town on it for a little bit and then took it away. I wasn't quite ready to begin this adventure yet.

Fast forward another week or so, and he did the same thing with a cherry tomato. Took a chunk out of it as if he were eating an apple. I'll never forget his chubby little hand holding on to that tomato, squashing it to death, as he sucked and gnawed on it happily. Shortly after this little flavor experiment we decided it was time to "officially' start feeding him real food.

We started with steamed sweet potato, avocado, banana, steamed carrots, and peeled apple wedges {not all at once- those were just the first few}. Since we don't have any food allergies in the immediate family we didn't wait days between introducing new foods. It has been great to just give him some of what we are eating most nights. When we are eating like crap I do make him something else. He is an adventurous eater and loves pretty much everything we have offered him. Bananas and avocados took several times before he enjoyed them. O even likes food that I don't! When we get Chicken in Black Bean Sauce from our favorite Chinese place Owen happily eats all the mushrooms I pick out {because mushrooms are gross}. We are a good team.

Early adventures
{Clockwise from top left: peeled apple slice, steamed carrots, broccolini at a restaurant, and banana}

I watched a lot of videos on YouTube and blogs of babies gagging while doing BLW. It helped a lot. Because without seeing them, I would have absolutely mistaken gagging for choking and panicked. Here is a video of him gagging from about mid-October {O was about 6 months exactly}. The video cuts off abruptly but I promise he was fine- my phone just ran out of storage and cut the video {story of my life--I need a bigger phone next time}. What I've learned is that there is usually no need to stick your fingers in their mouth to fish out something {and risk shoving it further in}-- they work it to the front and spit it out on their own.

Here is a video of his early eating skills {or lack thereof}. He consumed very little for the first several weeks, and that's just fine. His doc said we don't need to worry about how much he is consuming until he is one as long as he is still getting all the breast milk he needs. I should also mention we skipped rice cereal, and his doc was on board with that, too.We always fed him people food after he had nursed, since he was still getting his nutrition from that and the people food was just an extra bonus.

Now that he is an almost 11-month-old and a pro at eating, he will reach into his mouth, grab food, and remove it if he took too big of a bite. Which, might I add, is often. I have modified the BLW approach of big, easy to grab chunks of food into littler pieces that I put on his tray throughout the meal. If I put big chunks he shoves the whole thing in his mouth like the child has never eaten in his life. {I think maybe he has seen me dive into a burrito bowl at Chipotle one too many times} If I put lots of small chunks on his tray at once he scoops them all up and shoves them into his mouth at once. I am not super concerned with him choking at this point, but man is it ever annoying to tell him to slow down {and have him not understand} 500 times each meal.

Here is a video from 9 or 10 months old where O displays his slight enjoyment of food. His favorites seem to change from week to week, but his enthusiasm surely doesn't.

It seems that the way we feed O changes little by little every day. Sometimes I feed him with a spoon if it is something super messy, and sometimes he uses the spoon I load up for him. Right around when O turned 10 months he started to scoop food from a bowl with his spoon and eat it all by himself! He is still working on that skill, but he is getting it. It is exciting and crazy how much he has learned and how much is yet to come!

I don't know that BLW is an especially "crunchy" approach to feeding, but it is definitely off the beaten path, so I'm including it in my Accidentally Crunchy series. :)

This got to be a crazy long blog so thanks for sticking with me till the end. :)

-H

Accidentally Crunchy: Cloth Diaper Edition: Part 2

I posted here about why we cloth diaper, but I would feel remiss if I didn't throw my two cents about how we diaper out into Internet-land with the 29,472,819,473 other blogs about how to cloth diaper. I read so many of them when we were researching and planning our cloth adventure and so many were really helpful. If I can help another mama, I'm going to!

These are all the actual items we use, right down to the patterns on the bags!

First and foremost: It is not as hard as you'd think, nor as gross {due in part to your idea of "gross" evolving after you have a kid}, nor as time consuming.

We use Bum Genius 4.0 Pockets with snaps {not Velcro, because I read that it wears out too fast}. That means that the absorbent, microfiber liner gets stuffed inside the diaper and you change it like you would a disposable diaper. They are also one-size, so the same diapers will last him until potty training. {Then we can reuse them all when we have another baby down the road!} I don't mess around with prefolds and covers and snappis or pins or anything. I just don't have the time patience to deal with all that, and I doubt daycare would be on board if that were our style of cloth.

So here is our current routine {our original routine was even easier, but then O's diet changed from breastmilk only to solids+breastmilk and the poops changed too}

1. Take dirty diaper off the baby.
2. Throw wet diapers in the wet-bag.
2.5 If there is poop, set the diaper aside until baby is changed.
3. Wipe the baby's butt and throw wipes into the trash.
4. Put a clean diaper on the baby.
5. Throw actual poops into the toilet and the diaper in the wet-bag*

Boom. Done.

*We use Mio Liners in the diapers, which catch the poop and can be flushed. We tried going without and just rinsing the diapers in the toilet but it was just too big of a pain in the butt.

See! Not really that hard at all! If you felt like step 3 was too much, you could try cloth wipes and then they can be tossed right in with the dirty diapers. I don't mind the extra step so I stick with the disposable wipes.

Now, the wash/dry/stuff routine that is specific to my HE washer:
1. Take the wet-bag to the washing machine and turn it inside out into the washer, tossing the bag in as well. {Note the lack of touching any actual dirty diapers in this step}
2. Run a "rinse and spin" with "water plus" feature selected.
3. Then, {the gross part} open the washer and un-stuff any diapers that didn't un-stuff themselves during the rinse cycle. I say the gross part because they are rinsed at this point but not clean. So, they aren't visually gross, but they smell dirty. We un-stuff at this point because the spin cycles during the wash will just send anything left still stuffed into a little ball inside the diaper and I just don't feel like that gets them clean, even though they come out of that situation looking and smelling clean. Maybe I'm being crazy.
4. Run a "normal wash" cycle with the extra settings as follows: hot, soil level heavy, extra rinse. I use a splash {about a fourth of the recommended amount for HE washers according to the soap cap} of Ecos Free & Clear detergent. {We landed on this detergent from the list of cloth diaper friendly detergents because it was cheap and available at Target, rather than having to order online. We use it on the diapers and all our other laundry}
5. Pull the diapers out and hang to dry, toss the absorbent liners {we just use the microfiber ones that came with the diapers} and the wet bag in the dryer.
6. When everything is dry, leave them in the middle of the living room floor for a few days, picking out one diaper at a time as needed  stuff the liners into the diapers and put them in the drawer of the changing table.
7. Sometimes we add a Mio liner to each diaper as we put them in the drawer, but sometimes we do that during a diaper change. We are still tweaking this part of the routine since it is fairly new.

That's it. Really.

Ok, so I realize the wash routine has a lot of steps. But they really only seem like a lot of steps when they're written out. Plus, it's not like I have to sit and watch them wash for an hour. ;)

We are lucky to have our laundry room just off the family room in the basement, so we can easily do laundry as we watch TV or play with O.

Like I mentioned above, when O's poo changed from breastmilk poop to real poop we had to adjust our routine, but once we found those Mio liners we were set. They're cheap, I buy them at Target.com with my red card so I always get free shipping, and we just lay them on the diaper between his butt and the diaper itself. It takes 2 seconds.{Our routine before O was on solids was just tossing everything in the wet-bag. Breastfed baby poo is totally water soluble and washes out no problem in the washing machine}

Another thing I want to mention: our wet bags rock. They totally contain the smell of the dirty diapers. Our big one that hangs on the side of the changing table is Planet Wise, as is the smaller one {with separate clean and dirty diaper zippered pockets} that we send to daycare. In the diaper bag we have a smaller Itzy Ritzy bag. EVERY mom should have a wet bag in the diaper bag. I have used the smaller bags to toss wet swimsuits in, drool or spit up soaked shirts, etc. They are wonderful.


So, I hope this chapter of my crunchy life opens your eyes a little to how cloth really works these days. I know I had some misconceptions about it, and I know lots of other people do, too.

Look at that fluffy butt! I can't even stand the cuteness!

-H

Accidentally Crunchy: Cloth Diaper Edition Part 1

A fleeting idea. That's all it was in the beginning. "Hey- what if we did cloth diapers?" 

Well, fast forward a few weeks and you'd see hubs and I sitting on the couch, iPhones in hand, researching cloth diapers. The different brands, the different types, the lingo that goes with them, the various washing methods, and the list goes on and on. 

It was overwhelming to say the least. We were still on the fence about it when we walked into Buy Buy Baby to start our registry. But by the time we walked out {just 3 hours later} we were committed. Cloth was the answer for us. 

 

 

It seemed that conversations with people thereafter went something like this: 

 

"I saw you didn't have normal diapers on your registry."

"Yeah we're doing cloth- they're on the registry."

"Gross." 

"Yeah well...it's what we are doing"

 

*or*

 

"You're going to use CLOTH DIAPERS?! Are you insane??"

"Yeah we are going to use cloth...I don't think our diapers will be much different than disposables."

"Yeah well, you'll never keep up with it! You'll have him in regular diapers in a month."

 

The way so many people felt it was totally cool to tell me how gross my parenting choice was was kind of upsetting. I was an emotional, pregnant woman with family and friends basically telling me I was going to fail at this- one of the first parenting decisions we made! 

 

So....that is where the stubbornness piece of the pie comes in. Instead of putting diapers on my kid being nothing more than putting diapers in my kid, it became this challenge. I had to show all the naysayers that it could be done {by full time working parents} and it wasn't that big of a deal. Most importantly that they were wrong and I was right. 

Is this a great reason? No. Is it the truth? 'Fraid so. 

 

**{I should mention that there were plenty of people who were supportive and plenty more who totally thought it was gross but didn't tell me all about how gross it was or how they thought we were going to fail}** 

 

Onward to actual legit reasons we cloth diaper.

 

The environmental/earthy/crunchy reason definitely factors in. But honestly, it was more of a happy little byproduct of our decision to cloth diaper rather than part of the decision making. Nope, in all honesty the #1 reason we cloth diaper is that it saves us money. 

Yes, we run the washer more, but I haven't noticed a spike in our bill at all. Admittedly our water bill is auto-pay and I don't pay it much attention. So it could very well be a few dollars more; I just don't notice. 

 

Yes, we had a much larger upfront cost compared to disposables. But it wasn't really that bad. We didn't go to the store and drop $800 on a full stash of our Bum Genius 4.0 pockets. We used coupons at Buy Buy Baby {Buy Buy Baby coupons and Bed Bath and Beyond coupons all via mail, email, and text} and bought them little by little while I was still pregnant. It was no big deal to spend $40 here and there and I think it was a great way to go about building our stash of about 27 diapers. 

 

Lastly, they are stinking adorable. A fluffy butt on a baby is pretty hard to beat cuteness-wise. {Maybe a naked little baby butt. Or a kitten.}

 

 

Stay tuned for Part Two of my cloth diaper post with a run-down of our routine!

Accidentally Crunchy: Introduction

Outside of my *finding*fifty*two* project I'd like to blog about random other things as well. Starting with a little series I'm calling Accidentally Crunchy.

I never set out to be a "crunchy" mom. {I still don't think I am, really} but once you make one decision about your baby/birth/parenting there is absolutely a path that kind of just opens up in front of you. 

When I decided that I wanted to try to have a drug-free birth I started down what has turned out to be a kind of crunchy path. 

The books and blogs and articles I read to prepare me for the birth I wanted alluded to or suggested other topics. One thing led to another and here we are. Accidentally crunchy. 

But my thought is: why can't I have it all?

Why can't I have a natural birth AND feed my kid regular {not organic} food?

Why can't I cloth diaper AND carry a Coach bag? 

Do I really have to go down the rabbit hole of no-poo {google it} and homeopathic everything just because I prefer wearing my baby over using the stroller? 

I give O homeopathic teething tablets. I also give him baby Advil. And baby Tylenol. {Teething is a B} And I'm ok with that! 

I think I've found a pretty good balance, mostly due to the confidence I have in my decisions and the support I have in my hubby. 

My point is, I never set out to parent/live like we do. It just happened.

Hopefully my crunchy ways are entertaining and informative.

*I'd also like to point out that I am not one to turn up my nose at parents who do things differently- parenting is hard enough without some a-hole rolling their eyes at your choices*