All the Sun For You

A mom, two boys, a husband, and a whole lot of adventure!

Monthly Archives: July 2012


by 8 Comments

My Day in Pictures

I have not been blogging because, well, I’m emotionally drained right now AND all I would be writing about is weaning and how much my breasts hurt (holy hell!).  I am ready to be done with this – not to be done with nursing Matthew, but to be done with the weaning process.  I do not like it one bit (but who does, right?!  HA!)!

I did organize my frozen milk stash and that brought me much delight and comfort because it involved 1) organizing and 2) a spreadsheet.  If all else fails, nothing calms my nerves like a complicated spreadsheet that only I understand  😉

This slideshow requires JavaScript.


by 4 Comments

3+ Years

I went out with my girlfriends for dinner tonight.  We had a nice time!  The gals I met are my two friends who have done IVF.  They’re the gals I wrote about in this post.  We talked about how far we’ve all come since those dark days of coaching each other through the madness that is IVF and life in general.  It’s amazing to look back and think that 2 of the 3 of us didn’t have kids when we first met, that we were desperately trying to have babies, and that now – one of us has a 6-year-old, two of us have toddlers, and one of us is expecting baby #2 (not me!).  A lot has changed in 3+ years!

And we’re all happy.  We’re all so very happy with our lives!

We did talk about pregnancy announcements and how they affect us.  We briefly discussed particular ones that were alarmingly painful for us “back in the day.”  We talked about how some pregnancy announcements can still startle us, but for different reasons.  I summed it up by saying, “now when I hear that someone is pregnant, I have a healthy small dose of reasonable jealousy.  I’m jealous that they were able to achieve it without cold, hard science – but I’m happy for them that they were able to do so.  Before, I had nothing but the raging ‘I hate you, you effing fertile cow’ jealousy.”  Yeah – I’ve come a long way  😉

It’s so nice to have friends I can admit this to.  I’m all about admitting “the ugly” in myself – it helps me set it free and move on.  But it’s really nice when you can admit “the ugly” to people who nod along and fully understand you.  These girls – they understand me!


by 7 Comments

Cloth is EASY!

We’re on day 2 of cloth diapering and I am finding that I truly forgot how easy it is!  I feel a bit more at peace when I put them on Matthew – as if I’m doing him a favor.  I have no idea if he prefers them or not, but I like to believe he does.

We’re not going to be doing this 100% of the time.  We’ll be using a disposable diaper at night, and I’ll keep disposables in my diaper bag to use when we’re out.  I just don’t see the point in lugging cloth diapers around with me given that Matthew doesn’t usually require a diaper change when we’re out and about, and he is rather impatient with diaper changes and the cloth do take a little longer due to the snaps.  We have not noticed him getting more upset in the cloth when he’s wet – we’re not needing to change him any more often in cloth than we were in disposables, so that’s good!

Washing the diapers isn’t a big deal – but the thought I had about letting it go a few days since we have so many isn’t going to work.  Even after spraying out the dirty diapers, they still smell and I can’t stand the idea of them sitting dirty in the diaper pail.  I’m washing a load right now and there are only 5 or 6 diapers in there – and that’s OK.  Washing them isn’t the hard part – stuffing and organizing them takes the time.  If I only have 6-10 to do each time – that’s just not an issue!

Matthew’s shorts just fit over them.  Whew!  We do have a pair that I know won’t fit, and on the days he wears those, he can use disposables.  They’re cute and they have embroidered marlins on them, and I’m not willing to put them away yet.  😉


by 10 Comments

Rash

We’ve had a serious situation here with diaper rash lately.  This never plagued us before, but now it’s become a real problem.  Matthew’s poor little tush is raw at the moment and he’s quite grumpy about it (who wouldn’t be?).

We started out cloth diapering when Matthew was born and really, really liked it.  We never had a single blow-out, not a single leak, and no rashes.  However, I bought the one-size diapers that you adjust and they were just too bulky.  They worked fine with onesies, but even with sleepers, they were just too big and made his clothes tight.  We couldn’t put him in any of the pants or one-piece outfits I’d bought before he was born because they wouldn’t fit in the tush.  He also couldn’t rest his little thighs together when he curled up and that just seemed unnatural to us for a newborn.  And finally, with so much bulk down there, we wondered if the poor little guy was getting too hot given that it was full-on summer here.  We used the cloth diapers for 7 weeks and then decided to shelve them for a bit… until they didn’t need to be cinched up so much.  Everyone was happy.

My one regret about our decision is that we abandoned cloth wipes and natural cleansers at the same time.  That was stupid.

I tried the cloth diapers again about 6 months ago and they leaked like crazy (I’m sure I didn’t have them sized correctly), so I shelved them again.  We were used to the disposables, we were still having no issues with diaper rash, and the cloth ones were still pretty bulky so it made sense to stay in disposables for the time being.  We use Pamp.ers Swadd.lers Sensitive, so they really are quite soft and nice.  We tried the cheapies but they felt like paper to us, which means they probably felt like paper to Matthew too.  We don’t want paper on our butts, so why would he?  Needless to say, the last 46.5 weeks have cost us a fortune in disposable diapers, when I had a fortune in cloth diapers stored up in his top drawer.

I never moved the cloth diapers out of Matthew’s dresser because I knew that if I did that, that I would probably never go back to them.  My goal always was to return to the cloth diapers when the time was right.

We think the time is right.  When I changed Matthew after breakfast, his little tush was so red and unhappy.  B whipped up a batch of natural cleanser and I got the diapers out to size them all up.  He’s napping now in one of them.  He woke up crying 30 minutes into his nap, but never got up.  I think he may have wet his pants and realized it, but he went back to sleep and is sleeping soundly now.  I am anxious to see how his shorts fit over the diapers – that will be the deciding factor (that, and if they leak or not).

I forgot how cute these diapers are.  I’m actually a bit excited to get him back into them!  Now that he’s a bigger boy, I don’t think I’ll need to wash them every.single.day like I did when he was first born.  That, actually, is why we have so many (24).  He went through them so quickly and could not stand being wet, so I was washing diapers constantly.  I don’t know how some of you get by with only 12-16 cloth diapers with a newborn – Matthew went through about 14 a day when he was first born.

Oh, the cuteness!

We shall see how this goes.  I am really hoping it works well!  We will still use a disposable at night because, well, he sleeps through the night and we do not need to introduce a reason for him to be getting up.  When we have another baby, we’ll probably have him/her spend the first year in disposables too – it just worked well for us (and Matthew will still, likely, be using the cloth diapers).

The one drawback to this is that I JUST bought a new diaper bag that is the size of a handbag because the normal diaper bag is just too big.  I kept forgetting my wallet, or phone, or keys if I left the house without Matthew because I hated carrying the diaper bag without a baby to go with it – it was just too big and unnecessary.  Now that I’m going back to cloth, I wonder if the new bag will be too small.  We shall see.  I’m sure it will be fine… I’ll make it work!  I mean, who wouldn’t make it work with a diaper bag/purse this cute?*

* I am not a purse person – not at all.  I hate switching things out from bag to bag.  This little bag is completely out of the norm for me which makes me REALLY excited about it  🙂


by 4 Comments

Win-Win

We have begun the weaning process.  I am logging our progress here.  I have read a few posts from other bloggers that gave me the courage to bite the bullet and not come up with yet another excuse to not start today.  HA!

I just revisited my milk tracking spreadsheet to see how much of a supply we have built up.  This spreadsheet was my main motivator when I was pumping – it kept me on track and focused on the end goal.  If I felt like skipping a pumping, I would open up this spreadsheet and remind myself that keeping the “average per day yield” up was paramount to our success.  I had an end goal in mind, and I’m proud to say that we have exceeded that by a long shot!

As of this moment, I have 1034.5 ounces of breast milk in my freezer.  Counting the pumped milk he’s already consumed, I pumped a total of 1,301 .75 ounces.  That just sounds insane!

When I started out on our breastfeeding journey, my goal was to get to 3 months before re-evaluating.  We got to three months quite easily (after that difficult initial 6-8 weeks) and then I said that the goal was 6 months.  Then, 9 months.  Then, 1 year.  As my goals got extended, so did our freezer stash.  This was a win-win situation!

Matthew will have breast milk until September 10th or a bit later.  I figure I’ll have to start introducing whole milk at the beginning of September so that he has a smooth transition to that, so I bet that pushes us out until September 12th or 13th.  This makes me happy because that means he will have had breast milk exclusively for the first 14.5 months of his life.

Not bad.  Not bad at all.  Breast feeding WIN!*

* (Prior to our IF struggles, I never planned to breastfeed.  I was going to pump exclusively for three months and be done with it.  Oh, how times change!)