Twitter and Facebook

Since having Elsie, I've been introduced to and am absolutely loving Twitter and Facebook. We have some fun announcements coming both for Cotton Babies and for bumGenius.

If you use Twitter, be sure to follow the @cottonbabies and @bumgenius Tweets to be among the first to know!

If you're on Facebook, the bumGenius community can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1604205393&v=feed&viewas=1604205393#/pages/bumGenius/38922631639?ref=ts

The Cotton Babies Group for Facebook users can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1604205393&v=feed&viewas=1604205393#/group.php?gid=35365474010&ref=ts

A new bumGenius tester is born...

Elsie Lillian Labit was born on February 13th at 7:18am, weighing 8 pounds even. She is healthy, beautiful and such a happy little girl. Please forgive my lack of initial updates. I'd planned to blog through the first bit of her life, but it hasn't happened between recovering from having a baby and just adjusting to life with a newborn at home.

Elsie has been in cloth diapers alternating with disposables as needed. I have about 16 newborn diaper changes and we're doing a load of diapers nearly every day right now. We can use the bumGenius One-Size diapers now (she is 7lb 7oz), but our favorites for this phase of life have been the bumGenius XS All-In-Ones. They just fit her tiny little bum perfectly. I've also really enjoyed a Hemp Babies Little Weed trifolded in a newborn Bummis cover. Indian prefolds with a Snappi and newborn Dappi Nylon Pants have also gone quite well. I have a few diapers left to try yet... Right now, she is wearing a bumGenius Extra Small All-In-One (Clementine). My favorite, favorite color is the Ribbit though. It is so silly cute on her little bum. The Cotton Babies staff has been teasing me mercilessly about having some pink diapers. So, we have one. She has one Zinnia bumGenius diaper and, yes, it is cute on her bum. =-)

So that is the newborn diaper update. I'd love to include photos with this post,but she hates diaper changes so I haven't had much luck getting good photos of her wearing the different diapers. As soon as she realizes that a dry bum is better than a wet bum... we should be able to start snapping some cute newborn baby photos.

I've had a unique opportunity to freely test a bunch of products that Cotton Babies carries for postpartum care and breastfeeding. I'm working on another post now with my review of those products and which ones were my favorites.

Jenn's Newborn Stash - Need Your Suggestions!

I've been steadily checking things off of my to-do list. We bought an aqua Britax Companion from Albee Baby. Cotton Babies was sold out. Britax is sold out and Albee Baby was the only place I could find selling them at a super-cheap price. Britax is going to have another infant seat in May, but I just can't wait that long! The Companion is still sitting in the box in the basement waiting for one of us to figure out how to put it in the 2003 Chrysler minivan that we bought a week ago. Most of the baby stuff is located. I still have to pack for the hospital, pack the boys for grandma's house, write a birth plan and make an iTunes playlist for labor.

I'm back to the diapers issue though. As we were going through the diaper bucket trying to find the newborn stash, I realized that I sold all of my newborn diapers - every one! Andrew wore infant-sized Chinese prefolds and Bummis Super Whisper Wraps. Oscar wore Fuzzi Bunz (XS) and Kissaluvs (Size 0) when he was tiny. bumGenius didn't exist when my boys were tiny. So, now that my newborn stash is gone, I get to try some "new" diapers. The core of my tiny baby stash will be bumGenius XS All-In-Ones, but I am excited to actually get to try some other products that have been specially designed for newborns.

This is where you come in. Do you have a favorite newborn diaper that you think I should try? If so, post a comment and include a link to the product. If we (Jimmy and I) like it, there's a good chance that we'll bring it in as a new product at Cotton Babies!

Thanks for your help and advice! :)

Jenn

I just spent $19.97 on a package of disposable diapers.

I realized a few days ago that I've done nothing - absolutely nothing - to prepare for this baby. Most women spend nine months "getting ready". I'm eight months pregnant and just haven't had time yet to engage with the fact that yes, indeed, this bump that keeps me awake at night is a baby. It needs some basics like clean clothes, diapers, a place to sleep and a place to ride in the car. I need to get with it or Jimmy is going to be out shopping instead of hanging with me after the baby is born! So, I made my list of things to do this morning...

1. Buy a carseat. Cotton Babies is sold out of the Britax Companion, so now I have to order this and pray it gets here in time.
2. Write a birth plan. I don't believe in detailed birth plans, but it really helps to have some basic things written down so the nurses have some idea of what is important to me.
3. Find my Moby Wrap and my Medela Pump In Style.
4. Make an iTunes playlist for labor.
5. Move Oscar's clothes around so we have a place to put the baby's clothes.
6. Wash the baby's clothes.
7. Find the swaddling blankets... they have to be here somewhere.
8. Put the pack and play in my room after I figure out some way to clean the mattress. It's been used by several staff babies at Cotton Babies and is probably overdue for a good cleansing experience. Any thoughts about how this could be done?
9. Pack the boys to go to Grandma's house.
10. In our dream world, we'd get the Honda Odyssey. But that's just a dream because I seriously couldn't live with myself for spending that much on a car. Sigh. I'm cheap to a fault, but we really do have to buy a car. The Outback and the Civic just won't accommodate three carseats. Andrew is still 40 pounds and 6 years from being allowed in the front seat and driving two cars everywhere just isn't practical. We're going used, but the big question is whether we get a minivan or a medium-sized SUV. I'm leaning SUV, Jimmy is leaning minivan.
11. Pack me to go to the hospital.
12. Make sure that I have all the right tea and vitamins for the last couple of weeks of pregnancy. I usually at least drink red raspberry leaf tea and take evening primrose oil. I'm adding fish oil to that cocktail and also want to be sure that we have a good stock of Emergen-C for labor.
13. Buy diapers.

This last point is the whole reason for this post. I paid $19.97 for a package of disposable diapers. And it made me sick to do it... $19.97 for 92 diapers that are all going to end up in the garbage. You're probably wondering (for good reason) why a chick who owns a cloth diaper store would go out and buy disposable diapers. When Andrew was born, I came home with a hemoglobin level of 8. I was a first time mom, anemic, exhausted from 20 hours of labor and trying to pump around the clock for a newborn who refused to breastfeed at birth contrary to every book I'd read. When Oscar was born, I developed double mastitis within two days. It took two more days before they figured out what was wrong with me and two weeks before I was back to being myself again. For obvious reasons, both boys were in disposables for a period of time immediately after we brought them home. I'm hoping for a different experience with this baby, but, the nesting thing is kicking in and, when I was making my "list", it seemed important to be at least a little prepared.

Now why am I so bothered about a silly thing like diapers? I know that $19.97 buys a 24 pack of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese that I can leave on the food pantry table at church – or that I can have Amazon.com send to someone we know struggling with grocery money. We've all seen stories on the news during the holiday season about "letters to Santa" from parents who just wanted to have enough money to put a Christmas dinner on the table for their children. We haven't lost our income and it really isn't that much money in the grand scheme of things. I just bought one package of diapers and I'm probably justified in spending the money given our history. But am I seriously THAT lazy that I can't walk to the washer with a diaper pail full of cloth diapers? Would Jesus have bought the diapers or would He have fed someone hungry? At some point, I'll dig into the heart issue behind this... but right now, I just have enough energy to pray for an uneventful birth and post-partum experience that leaves our baby in cloth diapers from the beginning. Then I can just take the package back to the store and be done with it.

In the meantime, I have to focus on getting the rest of my list done... none of it is really optional and, once again, I’m sitting here with contractions four minutes apart (don’t worry, this is normal for me at this point) and a baby due in five weeks.

Soggy Diaper Day

Every once in a while there comes a day when you just can't get a moment to change a diaper. This morning was like that for me.

Lily woke up around 6:45 and I changed her into a new bumGenius and put her jammies back on. A few moments later my 11 year old came up to me and pulled up his shirt, revealing a lovely speckled rash. Hmm... that is a trip to the doctor for sure. I already was keeping my six year old home, she needed a chance to sleep in because she had been up coughing much of the night.

I took some of the remaining kids to their respective schools and returned home in time to grab a slice of banana bread while I waited on hold for the doctor's office. When I finally got through, they gave me an appointment for both sickies, but I had to be there in 15 minutes. Only enough time to brush my teeth and grab kids and go. I should have changed Lily's diaper then, but it had only been a little over an hour at this point. Hindsight is 20/20.

I didn't bring my diaper bag, just my purse. My diaper bag was under a box (don't ask why) and with my hands full and running out the door... aren't those famous last words?

So we wait in the doctors office. And wait. And I realize I am going to regret not having my diaper bag with me.

Normally I would have stashed a diaper, a wet bag, and some wipes in my car, But as luck would have it, I cleaned out my car yesterday and removed everything so that my son could vacuum it out.

My 11 year old is diagnosed with strep and the 6 year old is treated for her asthma, and then the 6 year old realizes that this is a Very Special Day at school and she should not miss it. (She missed the last Very Special Day like this.) However she is still in her jammies, not in a school uniform. So I call my mother in law, who goes to my house and gets her uniform and meets me at the school. We get her set up and dressed just in time for her event.

I drop off prescriptions, only adding about 5 minutes to the total morning and head for home and a clean diaper, finally.

Let me tell you, that bumGenius weighted about 4 pounds, but it did not leak.