Somewhere in the Middle

Upcoming Flats and handwashing challenge

2011-05-16T08:58:00.000-07:00

I love a challenge. I love proving to people I can do anything and be awesome at it. That's why next week from May 23-30 I will be participating in the flats and handwashing challenge. You can read the official post announcing the challenge at Dirty Diaper Laundry.

Here are the rules:

You MUST use Flats.
You MUST handwash them. How is up to you. (bathtub, sink, large wash tub, portable non electronic washing machine, or camp style washer (bucket and plunger- think churning butter)
You MUST air dry them. (indoors or outdoors, makes no difference)
You MUST limit your number of covers in rotation to 5 or less.
You can use any detergent you want. (Keep in mind that you still want cloth safe detergents)
You can still use your nighttime diapers but I ask that you try to make flats work. Maybe try a prefold wrapped in a flat.
You can use disposable liners.
You CAN’T use a diaper sprayer. I thought long and hard about this one, but at an average cost of 40.00 this is one diaper accessory that is out of range for many families. Dunk, swish, flush, or scrape!
You MUST start the morning of May 23 and end the evening of May 30.
You MUST fill out a completion survey about your experience. Results will be published here and can be republished on your own blog.
You don’t have to be a blogger! Your conclusions about the experiment will be entered into the survey at the end of the challenge. You can share on your Facebook, Twitter, various messageboards. But if you are a blogger please share your experience on your own blog. Grab the button and let people know you are planning on joining the challenge. Recruit others! Challenge your own readers to join and fill out the completion survey. You can blog everyday updating your experience, beforehand to let people know you are getting ready for it and explain what you will be doing, and of course, after the fact to let people know how it went. If you hated it, say so. If you think it was awesome and want to continue in some aspect, say that too! Who knows, flats might be your favorite diaper!

I'm hoping some of you out there will join me on this challenge, lets show people that you don't need to leave your kids in diapers longer than necessary because disposables are so expensive. We'll show them it is not as hard as they make it seem to use cloth diapers. Will you join the challenge?

Amazing Tiny Tush Giveaway!

2011-05-02T07:44:00.000-07:00

To celebrate 10 years tiny tush is giving away $100 gift certificate. I hope I win! Read more about the giveaway here. Good luck everybody!

Tomorrow is the Great Cloth Diaper Change!

2011-04-22T11:39:00.000-07:00

In celebration of Earth Day, tomorrow will be the Great Cloth Diaper Change. An event to put cloth diapers in the record books. April 23rd 2011at 9AM PDT we will set the world record for the most cloth diapers changed simultaniously! This event is happening around the world meaning some Mamas (and daddies) will be getting up in the middle of the night for this event. Luckily for me my time zone will be doing the change at 12 noon. If you are someone who wants to participate in the Great Cloth Diaper Change then please visit the website, http://greatclothdiaperchange.com/ Even if you don't currently cloth diaper then maybe this event will inspire you to look more into how awesome modern cloth diapers are. I hope to see everyone there!

Rockin Green giveaway over on The Cloth Diaper Fairy.

2011-04-20T10:13:00.000-07:00

Rockin Green cloth diaper detergent is a staple among a lot of us fluff addicts. Well here is your chance to win a bag for yourself. Over on The Cloth diaper fairy they are having a giveaway open until 4/25. Good luck! Enter the Giveaway here.

My journey with cloth diapers.

2011-04-19T07:38:00.000-07:00

I though I would share my journey on the path of cloth diapering.

Somehow I think I always knew I would use cloth. I used to make my own flat diapers for my dolls with blankets and safety pins, information I had gathered from cartoons no less. Everyone I had ever known in real life had used disposables. I've always been the "hippie" of my family. A title I've come to wear proudly. When I found out I was pregnant with my first son Eldin I began devouring any info on parenting styles I could find. I was determined to be the perfect mommy. Then when I'd finally gotten over breast vs bottle, co-sleeping vs crib, vaccines vs not using vaccines I finally started thinking about how I was going to diaper my sweet little bundle of joy. I began with a few simple google searches and I was in love with how cute modern day cloth diapers are!

I posed the idea of cloth diapering to Blake and to my overwhelming joy he said it sounded like a fantastic idea, especially when I pointed out the cost savings to him. So through meetup.com I found a local cloth diapering information group who had a meeting coming up and I RSVP'd to it. I was so excited to meet other people who used cloth diapers and to get to see and touch the diapers I was interested in. The group was run by a WAHM (work at home mom) Carissa, she was so sweet and informative. I highly recommend you check out her site here. At that meeting Blake and I decided we loved FuzziBunz one size pocket diapers. Mostly Blake made the decision because he loved the snaps instead of velcro and buying an adjustable one size meant more cost savings.

A few weeks after the meeting I placed my order with Carissa. I bought all the boy/gender neutral colored fuzzibunz one size diapers she had in stock, a total of 7 diapers. I had never been more excited to make a baby purchase. We still needed at minimum 5 more diapers preferably 17 more to build a comfortable stash. Unfortunately Blake and I were not good spenders at the time, we thought our family would buy some for us for our baby shower but no one did. They didn't give us any diapers cloth or disposable.

When Eldin was finally born we used the disposables in the hospital and took home as many as we could since we were really broke. When those ran out we bought another pack since we were waiting for his umbilical cord stump to fall off and he was not quite at the right weight to fit in the cloth diapers. We started using our cloth diapers finally although we used them very sporadically at first because we just did not have enough in our stash without having to wash diapers twice a day. We went on with this pattern for about 4-5 MONTHS before I fianlly had money to buy more. I ended up buying a flip daypack, an econobum cover and 3 prefolds, a snappi, some more rockin green samples and I recieved 2 free Kawaii one size diapers with my purchase. All was going great with cloth diapering once we had more diapers.

Eldin in one of his flip covers with a snappi'd prefold underneath.

Enter the dreaded HE washing machine. Previously in our apartment we had a normal run of the mill washer and dryer and our diapers always came out looking clean and smelling clean. Now that we live with my mother in law she has one of those high efficiency washing machines and I hate that thing with a firey passion! I'm currently battling major ammonia stink issues and while soaking overnight in rockin green has helped I'm still trying to completely erradicate the ammonia. It is not entirely the washer's fault because I did use unapproved laundry detergent when I was too lazy to order more rockin green but the washer is my biggest opponent.

Anyways that is the story of my sometimes Love/Hate but mostly LOVE relationship with cloth diapers. I hope to share more of my journey with you as we're coming upon a new chapter of having two children in cloth diapers. Hopefully things go a lot smoother this time!

How can you not fall in love with cloth diapers when babies look this cute in them?

Boy Oh Boy!

2011-04-14T13:24:00.000-07:00

On April 6th we went to Orlando to Winnie Palmer hospital to have a consultation with high risk and to have our anatomy scan. Everyone had been guessing girl but deep down I thought boy. At first little fetus face would not show us the goods, the ultrasound tech had me roll onto my side which was enough to get our baby to show us that we're having another boy! You can watch our gender reveal video that we made for our family here. When I found out our first child was a boy when every fiber of my being said girl I was devastated, I actually cried when I got home from his ultrasound. This time I'm not as disappointed. I'm not sure if the reason for that is because since I have Eldin I know how sweet and precious little boys can be. Or maybe since my intuition was correct this time I was more mentally prepared for the news. I still want a little girl so badly and Blake and I have decided to try again in 3-5 years. We've discussed adopting a girl which is what we will most likely do. I know a lot of people frown upon you when you have a strong gender preference but I don't feel our family would be complete without a daughter. I'm trying to be as open and honest as I can be with this blog and hoping that I will not be looked down upon because of the views I express. So now let's get to the fun part.... ultrasound pictures!

This baby is a lot more calm than Eldin was, I can even tell by his heartrate. Eldin never had a lower rate than 153, this baby is most often in the 140's.

I love that on this pic despite the three arrows and "I'm a boy!" written on it my mother in law still said she didn't know what it was. I guess she needs new glasses.

I love love love little tiny baby feet.

Fetus Face!

We never got good spine pics like this of Eldin, I love it!

Unfortunately we did not get any good profile pics of this baby because of the position he was in. I was disappointed because I wanted to see how his profile compared to Eldin's. I'm hoping this child favors my features more. Everyone says Eldin is a good mix of mine and Blake's features but they also say he looks way more like Blake. I just want one of my children to look more like me. I guess that is all for this post. Talk to you again soon!

Still.

2011-03-22T06:06:00.000-07:00

A quiet settles around me as I lay here in the aftermath of my verbal assault. My husband has been working hard to make money so we can finish our apartment. Since I lost my job and returned to being a stay at home mom he's been on edge. I love taking care of my son but sometimes I need a break, like when I'm sleeping and he has not made any bottles or changed any diapers for over 24 hours. To cut myself some slack, he started it. The baby was crying and instead of saying "Honey, the baby needs you" he starts kicking me in the back like an obnoxious child. I rolled over to tell him to stop and in the pitch black he kicked me in my 4 months pregnant stomach. Out of instinct I slapped him on top of his head and called him a d-bag, he responded by slapping me in the face in his groggy overworked stupor. I stayed awake and cried while he returned to his peacful slumber. Once he woke up I asked him if he would like to apologize, he said no. That's when something snapped inside me. I cringe as I remember some of the things I said to him, I must have told him six times that I'll be filing for divorce. I said he'll never see his kids and he wont get to be there when this baby is born. It was awful. Then he responds by taking my money out of my purse so I can't disappear for a few days. I waited a few minutes and then followed him to the kitchen. I explained how I needed that money to get to my prenatal appointment this afternoon. He handed me $5. I said "well what if I want food or a soda?" his answer was "sorry, no spending money today" then he left for work. What he doesn't know is that I've hidden his Black Ops game, sorry, no zombie killing today. Not my most mature action but again, he started it. I guess that is all I have to say for now.

Threatened miscarriage.

2011-01-03T10:51:00.000-08:00

So yesterday I woke up with some bad cramping and a tiny bit of spotting. To be on the safe side I decided to go to the hospital to get checked out. My husband was working at the neighbors house so I called him and let him know I was going, and then asked my brother in law to watch Eldin. Then I called my sister in law and asked her to go with me so I wouldn't have to be alone. We got to the ER and signed in. I was called back to triage after like 15 minutes then told to go back to the waiting room. They called us back to a room after about 30-45 minutes. Then we sat in the room for over an hour before the nurse came in. She said the doctor would most likely want to do a pelvic exam so she set that up and left. About another 45 minutes later the nurse and doctor came in after about 10 minutes of my sister in law sitting in the hallway staring at them. The doctor checked me and said my cervix was closed and that he wanted blood work and an ultrasound. He said I needed a catheter for the u/s so that they could inflate my bladder. The nurse started setting up for the catheter and I asked if it was really necessary, she said I had the right to refuse anything and that she would ask the doctor if I could drink something instead. He came back in a minute later YELLING at me, saying if I didn't get the catheter, then I was being irresponsible and not giving them a clear picture. So I agreed to it and the doctor stormed out. By this point I was in tears, luckily the nurse was very kind and understanding and gentle. She said she would page u/s and let them know I was ready right away. It took u/s 15 minutes to come get me which felt like FOREVER! So they inflated my bladder for the u/s. Then took me back to my room where thankfully the nurse was waiting to remove the catheter. After about 20 minutes (almost time for shift change at this point) the doctor came in and very coldly told me that they saw the gestational sac but no embryo which worries him. He gave me a doctor to call for a follow up tomorrow to do more blood work and make sure my levels are rising and not falling or staying the same. So please pray for me that they see my baby soon!

Considering a career path.

2011-01-01T22:44:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot about how much being a mother means to me. How much I love learning about anything maternity related. So now I'm looking into a possible future career. I'm interested in becoming a lactation consultant as well as a placenta encapsulation specialist (PSE). What placenta encapsulation entails is after a woman gives birth you take the placenta and dehydrate it or dry it out in some manner and then grind it up to make capsules to take during the post partum period, not unlike taking a prenatal vitamin. The beauty of these pills is that they are made for your body by your body. During the last trimester of pregnancy a woman's body secretes 3 times the usual amount of hormones, then after the baby is born she has a drastic drop in the amount of hormones produced, which is the main cause of "the baby blues". These capsules help replace the hormones lost until the body then resumes usual hormone production once again. They also restore iron levels and contain a great deal of protein. They contain oxytocin which is a natural stress and pain reliever, making the transition into motherhood an easier one. They also have a beneficial affect on a woman's milk supply. I'm hoping to start taking the courses soon for this fulfilling career. As a woman who suffered from severe baby blues and then a bout of post partum depression I would love to be able to help other women avoid those awful feelings. I know a lot of people consider the topic of the placenta to be controversial but it is the most amazing organ, it is what gave life and nourished us all on our journey into this world and I hope people will realize this and stop treating it as "medical waste" and give it the respect it deserves.

Our Christmas Surprise

2010-12-27T22:52:00.000-08:00

So we've been having a great holiday, but Christmas morning we got a big surprise. Click to watch.
we found out that we will be a family of four in nine months. Yes I am pregnant again after having my first child seven months ago. I was very surprised and happy. We weren't planning on trying again until after February but my husband and I are very excited. However I must confess that I am disappointed because I wanted to do the whole TTC process, I purchased a BBT thermometer and a YEAR membership to fertilityfriend.com and now I'm pregnant and this will most likely be our last child. It makes me very sad. I'm looking forward to this pregnancy and I want to cherish every minute of it since it may be my last time. You can follow my pregnancy vlogs on youtube at my YouTube channel. I guess that is all for now!