Baby Products at Three Months: Seats and Stuff

When Dianthus was little (and, yes, that already feels like a long time ago. Clearly he's giant now at twelve pounds), one of the greatest things we came up with was the fact that he fit very nicely into a rubbermaid under the bed tub. It was easy to transport from room to room (and sometimes even outside), inexpensive, and he slept very well in it. It worked well for over a month, and then suddenly he was just too big for it.

Fortunately, by the time he outgrew his tub, he finally fit into his swing and his bouncy seat. Such things really are not designed for babies much under eight pounds and, during that first month, every time we'd try to put him into the seat or swing, he just looked like a crumpled little mass. The bouncy seat we have is borrowed (Thanks Irene!) and works well as a seat. We rarely use the extra features: it has a toy bar with dangling animals that Dianthus is sometimes interested in and would apparently play music and vibrate if we put new batteries into it. The bounciness of bouncy seats varies a great deal, and some babies really like to bounce. At this stage in his life, Dianthus doesn't care, the seat is just a comfortable place to see the world from a different view. At his grandparents', Dianthus sat in a similar seat that was more sturdy and didn't bounce at all. He sat contentedly in it through most meals, and the vibrate and music options seemed to at least calm the adults around when he wasn't content (we liked to think that we were doing something). The super-sturdy non-bouncy seat was also very heavy, and, as we frequently move the seat from room to room (often with baby in the other hand), I prefer our lighter model.

We have a Fisher Price Take-Along Swing and like but don't love it. Dianthus can be calmed down in it if he's in a mood to be calmed down, but it doesn't exert any special magic on him, and if it is the height of fussy time, he can kick and scream in his swing just as much as he kicks and screams elsewhere. There is a huge price difference among swings, at $60, ours was at the less expensive end. It is fairly lightweight and supposedly folds somehow for car transport. The music is not terrible annoying, just odd (synthesizer lullabies with an extra jungle beat) and sometimes Dianthus looks at the "animals" dangling in front of him. We'll never know if he would respond really differently to the side to side rocking motion or the motorized mobile of the $150 swings, but somehow I doubt they would have been worth the cost. Like the bouncy seat, the swing can be easily machine washed, and, like the bouncy seat, this is an item I like having but would happily borrow* or find used.

My in-laws gave Dianthus a Baby Einstein play gym/activity mat. It's wonderful. At three months, Dianthus is now very into hitting and kicking (still somewhat randomly) the dangling toys and even at five weeks, he was entranced by the flashing lights and music. There are a great many things that bother me about said structure. I don't like raising a child to be constantly surrounded by bright colored plastics, mechanical music and shiny things dangling at exactly the right height for him. Still, he's three months old; if something doesn't dangle in front of him, he can't "play" with it and he really likes the lights. While in Colorado he played with a different version that I don't like nearly as well, except that it is lined up so that Dianthus could kick the ball while pulling on the toys.

The common complaint about all of these things is that they are only useful for a short period of a baby's life. I'll let you know as Dianthus outgrows them. These photos, by the way, are not all current. Below is the newest of the bunch, taken last week and some date back to Labor Day (2/3 of his life ago).

Baby Products at 2 Months: Diapers

We've tried all sorts of diapers with Dianthus. Here's what we've tried.

Bummis: Bummis are traditional cloth diapers except the diaper covers are breathable and quiet (no plastic pants) with velcro tabs (no diaper pins), the diapers are thick unbleached organic cotton, and one can use a flushable liner with them. We wash them on hot with an extra rinse with special soap (e.g. very plain; brighteners and stain fighters apparently can leave residues on diapers. We use Charlie's Soap* which is cheap and really, quite astounding in its cleaning power) and I line dry them. The starter set, 6 pairs or pants (3 patterned, 3 white) and 36 diapers cost $150 at the Blue Dandelion.

gDiapers: gDiapers are stretch cotton orange or vanilla bean pants, a snap in water-proof liner and a disposable insert. The plastic-free inserts are flushable, but we've been composting the wet ones and throwing away those with poop (being plastic free, they break down much faster than regular disposables). We started with a starter kit (2 pants and 10 inserts) and a case of inserts (160) from Amazon*, but the much better buy is directly from gDiapers and includes 6 pants and a case of inserts for $100. We would like to try gCloth, but they have been out since August.

Disposables: We've used Pampers Swaddlers, Swaddler Sensitive, Huggies, Huggies Pure and Natural and Baby Basics (the store brand at our grocery store). Retail prices in my town run about $12/36, $12/34, $12/36, $12 for unnamed quantity and $8/40. At Sam's Club, we bought the next size of Pampers at a much lower per diaper cost.

What we're doing now: cloth diapers while at home during the day (about 30/week), disposables overnight and in the diaper bag, gDiapers for outings and times when the cloth is being washed. Since we went from all disposables (see small child below) to this system, we have reduced our weekly diaper trash to about a third of what it was.

Our experience: Small child: We had decided to not use our cloth diapers until after Dianthus fully stopped with tar poop (about 8 days) and lost his umbilical chord (13 days). At two weeks we tried on the specialty diapers and they leaked straight out. A child under eight pounds with skinny legs will not fill out the gDiapers or the Bummis wraps. We had to continue to use the newborn size of disposables almost exclusively for the first six weeks. As most kids aren't in the newborn size very long, they are not available in very big packages, not at Sam's Club, and not in many alternative forms (i.e. Pampers makes two lines in other sizes, but for the newborns you can only buy the premium line, at least in our town).
Ease of putting on: Disposables are usually easiest, but when Dianthus was particularly wiggly and I wasn't good at changing yet, I found the gDiapers easier to put on. Now I will do any without thinking much of it. The Mister, meanwhile, is somehow intimidated by the gDiapers but has no problem with the cloth. Little note that, because gDiapers velcro in the back, they are more prone to sticking to fuzzy changing table surfaces.
Quantity: We're still talking ten plus diapers a day. We seem to go through more when we are using the cloth.
Cost vs. Environment: The more we use them, the more cost effective and more environmentally beneficial the Bummis are. Because I am doing laundry pretty much every day these days (another post), I don't mind washing them. I also hope to pass them on or use them for another child, which will further decrease the cost per use and increase the environmental benefits. Yet they were not cheap and the environmental costs of cotton production are not immaterial. At $150 for the set, I would need to use the cloth diapers at least 450 times before they start being cost effective if that were the only criterion. I've decided to consider them a gift from my ecologist friends to the environment (which they were) and thus of no cost to me. Every time I use them, therefore, I'm saving money by not buying disposables. I also think of them as something that allows me to use the more expensive gDiapers instead of regular disposables.

If the gCloth liners are any good, I would go with them along with the regular gs, so I wouldn't have the financial and environmental costs of two different sets of "permanent" pants.

Little Notes: The Mister liked the newborn Pampers better than the Huggies and both are far preferable to the Baby Basics, which we just quit using for a while because they seemed so useless. The color change strip on the regular swaddlers is much more pronounced than on the swaddlers sensitive. We don't yet use the flushable liners in the Bummis because currently the poop is basically liquid, against which the liners really are useless.

All little pants (gs or Bummis) require thought when washing to make sure that the velcro tabs are down so they don't stick to everything.

*Next to the new dishwasher, Amazon prime is about the best baby product around for those of us who live nowhere near shopping. Shipping on BOB alone almost paid for the year of "free" two day shipping.

For Dianthus from the Dandelion

Back at the end of March, my dear Kansas friends (many of whom no longer live in Kansas), threw me a surprise baby shower while I was in town. They gave me a gift certificate to The Blue Dandelion, a downtown Lawrence baby store, the kind of store that sells organic cotton sleepers on sturdy wooden hangers, all-terrain strollers more expensive than BOB and Scandinavian design high chairs. In short, it is the kind of store that I love but would never consider actually buying something at unless I had a compelling reason. Thanks to my friends for giving me a compelling reason. With that gift certificate reasons, I bought:

The Bummis set of unbleached cotton cloth diapers and the accompanying flushable liners and cute "whisper wraps"

A super-soft duckie sheet

A sleeper with a chipmunk

A sleeper with turtles

Six pairs of monkey socks and
Two wash clothes

All are made of organic cotton. More on the usefulness of all this later, for now, a big thank you to those great friends.

"Boys are also brave": Books About Nursing

"Boys are little men comprised of complex qualities like love, learning, laughter, and most of all, life!" If this statement from page 144 of the Better Homes and Gardens Baby Book (1969) seems a little vague, we can read specifics on the next page. "Boys find laughter and excitement in the simplest things; a birthday balloon bouncing in the summer breeze . . .", "Boys are also brave. They can pick up worms and thread them on hooks . . . If mothers were as brave as their sons, a boy's room would be a small private zoo." "Boys believe it is better to give than to receive. . . " "Being mechanical is just part of being a boy. If it's possible, boys are constructive and destructive both at the same time. They delight in tearing something apart to see what makes it work. In the process of re-assembling the thing, there are always spare parts-- but then this happens with Daddy too."

All of this information is critically useful in helping me to raise a son. The text on girls, meanwhile, is relatively scanty, but if I had a daughter I'm sure the photos captioned, "I wish I had a birthday once a week," and, "See Kitty, now I look just as pretty as Mommy," (pg. 173) would be equally useful.

Note: more generally interesting post about books I've read while nursing below.

One must assume that one can pick out useless (or worse) advice from modern parenting books just as easily as one can pick it out from older ones. That's part of the reason that I'm sure good mothers Irene and Ad Astra are correct that parenting is about what feels right and works with one's child rather than what's stated in a book. However, there are a heck-of-a-lot of details about which one has no intuition (if breastfeeding is not instinctual, the appropriateness of changes in poop frequency would hardly be) and it is really nice to have an authoritative book to consult. And another when one doesn't like the advice given in the first. And perhaps another in case the first two are wrong.

I have the second edition of Heidi Murkoff's What to Expect The First Year. It is easy to read and non-judgemental, but the month-by-month format doesn't work as well for parenting as it does for pregnancy. Would one necessarily think to look under the third month for diaper rash or the fourth month for wriggling during changing? Still, overall it is recommended, as is the handy, Your Baby's First Year issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics. This 4" x 7" paperback has the advantage of being small enough to thumb through while nursing. While What to Expect is written to sound like one is chatting with a friend (who happens to have consulted a bunch of pediatric literature), Your Baby's First Year is considerably more authoritative (I particularly like little boxed "Where We Stand" features that inform the reader that the AAP officially supports breastfeeding and car seats and officially opposes cigarettes and fire arms near babies). The organization of Your Baby's is just as awkward as What to Expect, with a similar hybrid of whole chapters on feeding or safety interspersed with chapters on month by month development which contain boxed essays on particular feeding or safety issues. Fortunately, the index is good.

I ordered The Nursing Mother's Companion by Kathleen Huggins during Dianthus's first week when I could learn from the previous books that breast feeding was not going well and that this was not uncommon, but not how to resolve the problem. At the time, the arrival of The Nursing just made me cry more. The book contains specifics about what I was doing wrong and some guidelines for correcting the problems and Dianthus and I still couldn't make it work. Despite that, I really like the book and highly recommend women who are considering breastfeeding (especially those that don't have breastfeeding classes and are over a hundred miles from a certified lactation consultant) read at least the first few chapters before giving birth or buying breastfeeding supplies.

From my mother I also own the aforementioned Better Homes and Gardens Baby Book, which is not as useless as the quotes I picked out suggest, and The New Revised and Enlarged Edition of Benjamin Spock's Baby and Child Care (first published in 1948, revised and enlarged in 1968). I haven't read much of either, but both are useful as reminders about how things change (e.g. Dr. Spock thinks that a baby should sleep in a 60 degree room), as support for any methods I like that are contrary to current thought (e.g. Dr. Spock thinks that three hours outside is vital) and for corroboration (methods recommended for sixty years carry more weight).

Images of Dianthus included because he is better looking than these book covers. Note that these images are both about two weeks old; he has much less hair now.

Baby Products at One Month

I'm going to start endorsing products so that I can "monetize" this blog* and do it full time (a la dooce.com) or, more likely, because I have an outrageous number of pregnant and wanting to be pregnant friends and grandparents of the very young are probably my largest audience.

While I wander the streets of my small town, most comments I receive are that my baby is exceptionally cute (which is true) or scrawny (not true!). Beyond that, people envy the sling ("I wish they made those when I had kids"**) and Dianthus's stroller and tell me they didn't know I was pregnant (I clearly was).

The sling is a Balboa Baby from Target. The Mister and I both use it, and while it seems outrageously priced for a piece of cotton, two pieces of elastic and two plastic rings, I now think it is well worth the purchase price (thank you to my aunt and uncle who purchased it for us). Among other things, it can be used with a child under 8 pounds (unlike the Baby Bjorn, which we have not used yet), it is easy to load the baby in by oneself (a big difference from the Moby Wrap) and the Mister has a system of tucking in crying baby so that Dianthus can lie in the pouch contentedly sucking on a pacifier without losing it in frustration.

The stroller is a BOB revolution. BOB is a three wheeler (with air in the tires) off road or jogging stroller. The front wheel pivots and it has an incredible turning radius and handles beautifully. My parents had offered to buy Dianthus a stroller, and it felt like expensive overkill*** when I asked them for BOB (and the extra attachment that allows a small baby to use BOB by clicking in to his car seat), as I don't jog and don't have big plans for trail running. My town, however, is short on sidewalks and those that we do have are very crumbly. Dianthus and I have walked into the grass or gravel to avoid traffic on several occasions already. BOB is fabulous for here. Thanks to Mom and Dad for BOB.

Dianthus is awakening, and I've already written this post in four installments, so you'll have to wait for the next in this series for information on musical plastic, pacifiers, disposable diapers and the other things never planned to own.

*Blogger has a button for this on the dashboard and it makes my brother-in-law and me laugh.
**This makes me laugh, because the idea of strapping a baby to your waist with a cloth over a shoulder is probably as old as cloth. True, they weren't always available at Target, and if one used one in 1970 it would appear very ethnic or hippie, but the idea is not new.

***But given that there are $1000 strollers on the market, it's not so hard to justify $400 for a BOB.