the squibix family blog

The main kind of diapers we looked into were diety-service diapers, flushable diapers, and pocket diapers. If there is any other category of cloth diapers I will be amazed, but you never know. Leaky poop all over your bed is the mother of invention, after all. (If you want a whole website of helpful cloth diaper comparison information, go there and stop reading this post!)

We decided on a pocket-type diaper because 1) there's no diaty service in our area, and 2) flushable diapers require walking from the changing table to the toilet, and like I said before, lazy. There are a bunch of different pocket-type diapers to choose from, but from my extensive research (okay, two friends and one website) the best is the Bum Genius 3.0. And how can you not be with a name like that?

WHAT IT TAKES:
We have about 30 diapers in various fun colors. When Harvey soils one we take the insert out and throw both diaper and insert into a big Simple Human pail lined with a cloth bag. (Each diaper comes with two different size inserts so that they fit him better as a newborn but absorb better when he's a heavy pee-er. Which Harvey is. A pee-er of the realm you could even say.)

Every other day we take out the bag (and put in a clean bag - you need two) and throw the diapers in the washer. You can't wash the diapers in the bag, but you can sort of press the bottom of the bag up to push all the diapers into the washer without touching them. Whatever - when you're a parent you touch a lot of gross things - you get over it. We wash the diapers for 30 minutes on cold with mountain green soap, and then 30 minutes on cold/hot again with soap. Then we put them in the dryer for an hour and they're done!

Well, not quite done. What you have then is a big laundry basket filled with diaper tops and diaper inserts. It takes about half an hour to put them all together and back into the baskets. But I wouldn't say that's a deterrent to the process. When you're watching a baby all day, there's A LOT of sitting around time.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE HIPPY!
We also use cloth wipes, which I highly recommend. We have about 50 of them. Half of them (actually 21 - I've counted) go in our wipes warmer (thanks Matt!) with a mixture of baby soap and water. The other stay in a basket by the changing pad, because sometimes you need both wet and dry wipes to do a job, if you know what I'm saying. If you're a parent, you know what I'm saying.

CAVEATS
We didn't start cloth diapers for about two weeks were when Harvey was first born. This is mostly because I wanted to oversee the whole process vis a vis the washing machine, and didn't realize I wasn't going to get out of bed for that long. So other people put him in plastic diapers, and the world didn't implode. And I'll even say that for the first couple days where black tar-like liquid is coming out of your baby it's not a bad idea to throw away a few diapers. Mother nature won't fine you, and also the hundred grandparents in your house won't come in every five minutes while you're sleeping to say HOW DO I SNAP THIS THING ON, AGAIN???

Which is actually a big benefit of the bum genius that I forgot to mention - they go on like regular diapers, which is to say with the same general shape, so that even babysitters can do it. If you ever leave your child with a baby sitter that is. That's another issue.

Another time we took a break from bum genius was when we went camping at H=5-weeks-old. Then we brought along plastic diapers due to the lack of washing machine at the camp site. Our hippy identity was only saved by the fact that we were TAKING A 5-WEEK-OLD CAMPING!

Even so, I'm glad we had that brief experiment with plastic diapers, because it reaffirmed our belief that cloth diapers are actually neater. In the plastic ones Harvey's poop got all spread around and smushed to his butt causing more rash, whereas it absorbs better into the cloth ones. Also? Plastic diapers are really expensive! Sure the cloth ones are a big investment up front, but then we're done buying diapers until he's potty trained.

MORE S—- TO BUY!
The other things I found helpful with diapering on the go are a big diaper bag, since packing cloth diapers takes a bit more room, and two wet bags for the road (two so that one can be in the wash sometimes - although a plastic bag from CVS will work just as well if you happened to forget your canvas bags at home one time you horrible hippy race traitor.)

And if you want more resources on washing cloth diapers, like I said I've found this site helpful. You can even print out their washing instructions and tape them to the front of the washing machine.

Beats paper towels any day.

It's even expected! What to Expect says that most moms aren't up for sex during the post-partum period. Scanning their article, it appears that the factors are stacked against us: Lack of sleep, hormones for breast-feeding, soreness after delivery... wait what? How long are they talking about waiting here? Oh... SIX WEEKS??? Where's the entry for "I haven't had sex in seven months and there are climbing vines growing over the entrance to my secret garden?"

I typed that string into google, but it came back with zero results. So okay, I haven't had sex in eight months. I guess I am totally alone.

What happened is this. First the midwife suggested that my complaint of unbearable pain with intercourse was a symptom of vaginismus, a disease that may or may not be made up, with the only symptom being pain with intercourse. Which actually makes the picture seem more rosy than it is. After all, I had pain with childbirth but the kid still got out into the air okay. Sex, on the other hand, is completely non-starter for us these days. Dan so much as looks at me lustily and I start sobbing in anticipation. But I'm getting ahead of the story, because it turns out that this possibly made up frigidity disease? I don't actually have it.

You see, after going to the gynecologist for an exam, the doctor decided that I don't actually have vaginismus, but a lack of estrogen due to breast-feeding. She proscribed a topical estrogen cream (which didn't work) and also said the situation might improve when the baby started solid foods (it didn't). Then she said to come back in a month if the matter didn't "clear up," but she cancelled that follow-up appointment because her son was sick that day. Really I think she was so jazzed up with her estrogen cream that she called in sick so her husband and her could do it all afternoon in the car. But that's just my opinion.

If I was the kind of person who liked doctors (or at least didn't harbor a pathological fear of them) I would have called to reschedule the appointment, and I even dialed half the number a few times, but I couldn't think of what to say to the receptionist.
"Hi I'd like to make an appointment with Dr. Jones."
"Okay, what's the appointment about."
"Um, er, I haven't had sex in eight months."

I don't know whether the receptionist would gasp and say "egads!" or roll her eyes and say "so?" Maybe depends on the last time she had a little date time with her husband in the car.

For the record, I wasn't always so frigid. See this post about the full-page spread I got in my high school yearbook.** Plus, I know people who are frigid, and they don't make scarves embroidered with porn (NSFW, unless you work for ETSY's underground cousin SKETCHSY). So when the doctor told me in that first appointment that "it could be you just don't want to have sex right now" I was all, whaaaa? Meeee? I'm all about the liking sex. Insert dirty joke here!

But then secretly in my brain I'm all, sex makes owies and yelling things. Let's just lie in bed and read separate issues of the Economist.

So here I am at a standstill. Do I wait until the baby is weaned to see if my normal hormones kick in again? Do I visit a (gasp) therapist to talk about my newfound feelings of complete and absolute terror of intimacy? Do I start the search process for a second wife for our marriage? (Note: must have income and be willing to sleep in the basement.) Or do I just act like it doesn't matter, many people have sexless marriages, look at the Clintons. I don't know folks. I don't know.

*Hi google searchers! This blog is funny! Please stay!
** But that was the ONLY sort of spread I did in High School! Don't get to thinking otherwise.