Sunday, May 30, 2010

The great diaper experiment

Well, I made it. I had my last class of the school year this week. The summer is stretching ahead of me (well, once I finish up the end-of-the-year stuff, it is).

The last two weeks were tough. Mr. X was out of town for the second-to-last week, and for the first time I had no family in town to help. That Wednesday, I went in to the office and was rushed from one thing to another all day, and finally had to rush home to relieve the babysitter without having a chance to pump all day. I wound up with an excruciatingly painful plugged duct that took until Sunday to fully resolve.

But, on the good side, we took that week as the opportunity to see if Nicholas could fall asleep by himself . . . and he did it! It's been two weeks, and he's fallen asleep on his own every night. We had been gradually preparing him for the transition, because we weren't going to let him cry it out. Especially with all that he's gone through being adopted at 1 year old, we wanted to make sure he feels secure and knows that we'll come to him if he needs us. We do go back in if he cries for more than a minute or two. Tonight, I was putting both kids to sleep (Mr. X is working for a client in Asia this week, so he's home but online all night long. Weird, but better than having to travel!), and Nick fussed for 30 seconds, then played in his crib for a while, and then, half an hour later and just as Sarah fell asleep, he started wailing again. I went in, and he had thrown everything out of his crib and unzipped his pjs. I got his pillow, blanket, and tiger, zipped him up and tucked him in, and he went right to sleep.

So . . . to get to the whole diaper thing . . . at long last, I tried cloth diapering the kids today. I have two dozen (I think . . . maybe it's three) full-size prefolds and four 15-to-30 pound diaper covers, so I figured we'd give it a shot for one day to see what it's like. I think it will be good! Of course, Sarah had an amazing blowout on the way to church. The church we've been attending has better mass times than our parish, but absolutely nowhere to change a baby. So, I changed her on the front seat of the car. Thank God, there was just a tiny bit of poop on the little pants under her skirt. I made a rookie mistake and got poop on the new diaper and cover, so we shot two of the diaper covers right away. But I got the clean one on, and we did fine for the rest of the day. We went through 13 diapers and all four covers, but we're using disposables at night and for Nick's nap. I've put everything through the washer once on cold, and I'm about to throw it all in on hot before I go to bed. But Mr. X is on his lunch break, so I'm going to go talk to him before I sleep :-)

7 comments:

HereWeGoAJen said...

I hope you enjoy the cloth diapers as much as I do!

mrsblondies said...

I'm hoping to do cloth diapers if we are able to have kids. I hope Nick's ability to soothe himself to sleep continues to improve.

Kaitlin @ More Like Mary said...

Thanks for the congratulations!! Cloth diapers are definitely something I will consider-I'll have to check back to see how it's going!

Sew said...

I'm DYING to cloth diaper!!! That's they whole reason behind my clothes line! ;)

Beth said...

I love cloth diapers! We mostly use prefolds with snappis and covers too. They work great and they're super easy!

Welcome! said...

All of a sudden I am coming across so many moms who are trying cloth diapers. Us too - we started day before yesterday and I have NO support from my local girlfriends. Keep us posted on how you like them... I could use all the online support I can get. I came across this link tonight - it has a video too. http://styleberryblog.com/category/mommy-topics/cloth-diapering/

Little JoAnn said...

I love your line about the rookie mistake! You are making me curious about cloth diapering now!

 

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