Baby photos: Owen 9-10 months

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Tia Kate

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Ode To Fuzzi Bunz | My Cloth diaper findings

So I think I said I'd report back when I had solid poop diapers to report.  Well, after months of lovely experience in this department, I have good news.  Fuzzi Bunz diapers still easy! In fact, it smells LESS!  Nasty, who wants a poop-filled diaper sitting around for any length of time? I don't care how many plastic bag diaper sausages you have (aka diaper genie) it's still nasty. 

Here are my findings.  

1. Fuzzi Bunz rule
2. Use Charlie's Soap
3. Follow FB's washing /drying instructions

but what about the poop, cameron? Poop is gross, I don't want to have to "touch" it.  Hey, you are in luck, you don't! 

I told you about the baby poop and how to wash it right in your machine, now comes the mystery with solid poop.  

When your beloved infant begins to eat solid foods, around 6 months or so, the poop changes from the cute yellow sweet smelling (breastfed) poop to "man-sized" poop as my husband has nick named it.  The beautiful thing, if you can handle the word choice, is that solid poop just falls right off the diaper and 

KER-plunk... into the toilet.  FLUSHH.... gone.  Should you be left with some poopy residue, which happens about 25% of the time, I turn the diaper poopy-side down (after first flush) and swish it around a bit and flush again, this time holding the diaper in the middle of the "waterfall" of the toilet. This works great, then you just plop that diaper into the cloth-lined diaper pail and shut the lid.  

I wash diapers every other night and I have 12 FB.  I have a front-loader so I wash on cold "pre-wash" instead of soak and then hot/cold heavy cycle.  I simply take the cloth bag from the pail, and open the washing machine door and stuff the bag inside out into the machine. I never touch anything. Sorta the same concept as doggie poop bags. The diapers wash out so clean it's scary. 

Some FB tips:

• get the full priced FB because they guarantee them with a great warranty (keep your receipt) and they come with a great insert
• get 2 cloth can liners, this way while one is washing you'll have another in the hopper. 
• Get 12-14 FB if you can.  I made it with 8 when he was 0-3 but was washing every night. Get 16 if you are "rich" or you find a good sale, you might only have to wash every 3 nights!
• buy a water sprayer to wet the wipes (the small bottle kind you use to wet down hair) and 10-12 cloth wipes because if you are washing anyway might as well do the wipes too. 
• don't feel too bad if you use one disposable per night.  I'm giving you permission. I do it.  We are transitioning to FB at night because now that he sleeps, he doesn't have wet WET diapers every morning
• change them every 3-4 hours (I do it before his naps)
• get yourself a wet/dry diaper velcro baggie for when you go out and keep one fully ready FB in your diaper bag. 
• do not use diaper cream or any lotion on the baby's butt OR dryer sheets... it compromises the functionality of FBs
• you can take them on vacation!  Especially a weekend trip.  If you have access to a wash machine you are set. My husband knows I go a little crazy if I have to put more than one disposable on my boy.  They are stinky and give rash

Questions? Oh, FB came out with a new "all-in-one" -- I'm skeptical!  I will need to purchase one to find out but 6lbs-30lbs... just doesn't seem reasonable.  I suppose if anyone can do it FuzziBunz can. 

Boy is awake~ ! 

Owen video almost 11 months

Baby doesn't drink~ !

Q: I'm wondering out there... who else's baby is self-weaning to 2-3 nursing sessions (if you can call it a session) a day and still pretty much refuses the bottle?

A: Owen Wyatt Clark, my baby.

I mean, there was this promising week or two where Owen pounded formula from the sippy cup as if he was a new college student discovering beer. He'd drink it in the stroller, in the car, in the bath, you know, whenever mama wasn't home. Now, he's picky about it all. He doesn't like breast milk in any other container besides breasts so finally one day we stopped trying to feed him my breast milk and went directly to formula and poof he finally drank something... (PS of course, he only likes Earth's Best Organic $32.00 a can formula, he literally won't even touch the other brands even if they are Organic).

So this is his nursing "schedule" HA HA. As if, he's never subscribed to a solid nursing schedule, it's alwyas different everyday but there are some patterns...

6AM nurses first thing when he wakes up, generally for a good amount of time 10-12 minutes per side
occasionally will nurse after his first nap, 10:30-11AM, if I'm home and only for 5 minutes, ten if I'm lucky.
he's beginning to give up his post-second nap nursing too! Today he only nursed for maybe 2 minutes per side, MAYBE.
Then sometimes he nurses before bed, sometimes not... he just refuses most of the time...
midnight, good solid nursing 10-15 minutes then back to bed.

Sooo as you can see, he drinks nothing. His diapers are mostly wet, though, so I'm trying not to worry. Matt and I try to offer the sippy cup OFTEN mostly we get about 4 extra ounces in him a day. What works best for this is to always have the milk out and available for him, so he can think it's "his idea." That reminds me of a cat I had once, who would only cuddle up next to you if she thought it was HER idea.

Juice, you say? Tried it, doesn't like it but we continue to offer it. Interestingly enough, he does like prune juice. He especially likes prune juice from the mini-cans.

I was planning on nursing till Owen quit and I gotta tell you, I'm thinking he's closer than I'd like. I mean, who does he think he is? Quitting me. HA! Plus, who is going to comfort him at mightnight when he's screaming about how much his teeth hurt... waaaa waaaa... enter boobs, silence, shhhh shhh.

PS if you can believe it, we are winding down January here and Owen will be 11 months on Feb. 1!! One more month to his 1st birthday. THAT is crazy talk. But I'm here to tell you it didn't go by fast. Last March seems like a decade ago, if you ask me.

Leaving the baby overnight for the first time

I can honestly say if you polled me last year when Owen was born, I would not guess that it would take me 10.5 months to leave my baby overnight. I would've figured some work-related task would take me away from the home for an overnight trip. Owen never took a bottle so it made leaving him at all a challenge--still is. Matt had to actually bring him to me at most weddings (I'm a wedding photographer) until Sept. (7 months). At any rate, a conference came up that I really wanted to attend and it was the perfect opportunity to leave him with Matt. I left Sunday around noon post-nursing and didn't get back until 10PM the next day.

Miracle of all miracles Owen survived without me.

This was an important lesson for my own psychology. He will survive!

I think every mother feels connected to her baby and certainly every nursing mother has a hard time leaving her baby when he still nurses frequently (and doesn't take a bottle). Owen nurses once at 11PM or midnight and again first thing in the morning. These are typically BIG nursing sessions for him, so as you might imagine I was worried he would "lose it" when he woke up and Mommy was not available. Not so much.

He woke a bunch more than usual before 11PM that night but Matt gave him his sippy cup (thank god he sorta likes that thing) around 11:30 and he fell asleep on Matt and he went back into his crib and slept until 5:45 and then napped on Matt until 6:30 or so. Not too bad, actually. I think babies live in the "now" more than we think.

Kudos to my husband for even agreeing to try something like this with our persnickety boy. I THOUGHT he would cry for a couple hours when he woke up and then be up every hour while I was gone... so I was pleased that he was really FINE.

This is encouraging since I have a business trip to NYC in March. The plan is to leave him for three nights.... and I'll be pumping milk in the big apple. Yippie. I now have a tad more confidence in the boy... and in myself and my own sanity. I'm really NOT a neurotic person... honestly, I'm not. Being a Mother is hard.

If you have never left your children overnight... I highly recommend it. I think it really helped me realize an important lesson: they will be fine, especially in qualified hands like my husband. Each time a small milestone is reached: having someone else put him to bed, leaving overnight, leaving all day, I feel a little bit of Cameron returning and I think Owen feels happy too.

Fever in the Morning, FEVER in the Afternoon. FEVER!

Hi blog-land. Hopefully I'm back. Made it through a very busy fall wedding season and the aftermath (READ editing) is almost done. Now I can do things that I like to do such as baby bloggin'

So, after the holidays (Owen received plenty of shiny plastic and battery operated toys) Owen decided to spend our last 4 days of vacation time operating at a balmy temp of 103.6. Now this is only the second time he's ever been "sick." Both times were just fevers without any other symptoms and both times coincided with teething episodes. I just wanted to write a quick post about his fever and how we dealt with it.

He was hot one night when I went in to nurse him around 11:30PM and it was directly after a day of serious drool so I figured it was just another 24 hour fever like the last one. He wanted nothing more than to hug my shoulder fall asleep and nurse endlessly and sleep on me (he never wants to sleep on me). That night he had trouble sleeping and woke up many times. The next day he was hot all day and we took his temperature and it was 103.6. I have a pediatrician friend, so I called him and he said to just stay on the Tylenol, lukewarm baths and ride out the fever. I'm a believer in keeping the fever somewhat hot because your body is rising its temperature for a reason: to kill stuff. With babies; however, they just cannot get comfy so we did give him Tylenol and on day 3 broke down and gave him some IB. Luckily he didn't have any febrile fits (rolling eyes into head and having small seizures). The doctor said 103.6 is too high to be a teething fever, but he had no other symptoms, so I'm chalking it up to fever. We did the bath, we kept his activity low key and he rode it out. Four days later it just went away. It was a long four days and nights and there were a few naps in there that kept us alive. Each time this happens it takes him several more nights to get weaned off the constant night nursing but after about a week his schedule is back.

This fever gave me pause because I thought of all the parents out there who deal with terminally ill children and see their children in the hospital frequently and even just the thought makes me tear up. I can think of nothing worse, really. We have been fortunate that Owen is very healthy and happy child.


Cheers and Happy 2009.