Isaiah is 5 Months Old!

This is 5 days late... does it count that I've been thinking about it since before he turned 5 months?

-Isaiah is a little over 17 lbs (Weighed naked on our digital scale he was 17.2 lbs on his 5 month birthday).

-He is 27.25 inches tall and in 9 month clothing.  He's grown almost 2 inches in the past month and can't squeeze into 6 month at all anymore.

-His head circumference is about 17 inches.

-Same as last month, he is on the medium rise setting on his diapers. Even though we have hundreds of diapers (I'm slowly selling off the pocket diapers that there is no chance of me using anymore), we exclusively use Flip covers with various inserts (stay dry, organic cotton, Thirsties inserts, flats, or prefolds) during the day, with a few bumGenius Freetimes thrown in, mostly for Daddy. At night he wears an sbish snapless fitted (with both doublers) with a Blueberry one size cover with aplix. The rise on the cover is completely unsnapped to fit over the fitted.

-He still has those two bottom teeth playing peekaboo, and his bottom gums are swelling out in other areas, so I think some of his other teeth are moving around.  The poor baby's stubborn teeth just won't poke all the way through!

-He has no bottles ever, nor will he ever have one unless something horrible happens, like me ending up in the hospital on my deathbed unable to breastfeed.

-We've been cosleeping for over a month, and we love it.  He sleeps like an infant is supposed to - getting up to nurse anywhere from 1 to 3 times in the night.  He can fall asleep if I put him down when he's awake, as long as he's calm and relaxed.  I lie there with him, though.

-Overall he sleeps about 11.5-12 hours at night, and goes to bed between 7 and 8, depending on when he woke up from his final nap - right now it's usually closer to 7.

-Isaiah doesn't nap in a crib anymore, just on me while I wear him (which is what we're doing right now).  His naps are usually 30-40 minutes, but occasionally we get one around an hour long.

-He is down to 3 naps a day, which isn't a lot of napping time considering his naps are usually only 30-40 minutes long, but it seems to be all he needs.  Apparently I breed children who need freakishly short naps.

-He still sleeps on his tummy, which I am less nervous about now that we cosleep.

-Isaiah is THE happiest baby I have ever met.  His constant enormous smile makes us all smile constantly, too.  I love his shrieks and giggles and how he "talks" to us.  He has such an awesome personality.

-He's getting very good at grabbing things and putting them in his mouth.

-He rolled over for the first time at 15 months (front to back), and didn't do it again until 19 weeks when he started going both ways.  Then he didn't really do it much until the week before he turned 5 months.  Now he's just like Noah was at the same age - if you lay him down on his back he will immediately roll onto his front.

-He is friendly to people and smiles at them when they talk to and smile at him, but he's very selective about who he wants to hold him.  He is obviously awesome with me, good with Justin, good with my mom or sister, but kind of awful with my inlaws.  He likes them from afar, but if they even start talking about holding him he gets a scared look on his face and will start crying.  So weird.

-He really likes his Dad, I think maybe more than Noah did when he was this age, but my memory might be skewed because once Noah was about 6 or 7 months (and for a long time after that) he had a HUGE preference for me, and it sometimes seemed like he didn't even like his Dad (which was sad and  ridiculous because Justin is the world's greatest Dad!)

-He can sit independently for up to 15 seconds if he's interested in balancing himself properly.  He is nowhere near mastering this, but I have no doubt that by 6 months he'll be sitting independently.

-He loves Noah!

-We still babywear all the time, which makes us all very happy, and our carrier stash continues to grow. I've sold a ton of carriers, but I'm pretty sure I have about 25 right now.  I honestly lost track, and I need to do inventory.

-Evenings are no longer witching hours for Isaiah.  He's pretty happy, the only difference is that if he is tired, he NEEDS to be with me.  If Justin is carrying him around while I get stuff ready for bed he will start to WAIL, and then stop as soon as I take him.  We can hold this off for a bit if Justin follows me around while I get stuff ready, but he HAS to see me. It's only when he's feeling tired, but as soon as I take him he can often be perfectly happy for another half hour before starting bedtime routine.  We find it rather amusing.

-He still has all his baths in the kitchen sink because it's easier for me.

Picture time!

The day he turned 5 months!  This was not a planned "photo shoot", he just happened to be naked on my bedroom floor:

I'm currently selling this wrap: 

Brothers:

I did not tell Noah to put him arms around Isaiah... that's all him!

Because he's teething he is ALWAYS chewing on his tongue!  I think it's cute :)

LOVE this kid! 

Wool Works!

Last night's diapering adventures were successful!  The fitted he was wearing was wet through all the layers in the front (countless layers of bamboo and hemp - his bum area was dry, though... he's a boy AND a tummy sleeper), but the inside of the wool cover was barely damp.

His diaper wasn't totally saturated, so I think I might take out the hemp doubler I had folded in front for tonight.  His diaper was very thick in the front, and I don't think it was necessary.

I only slept 4 or 5 hours last night, probably because I kept wondering what was going on with his diaper.  Hopefully I rest more peacefully tonight, knowing he will wake up dry:)

Unfortunately, Noah is still sick.  I think it might actually be the 18th time.  He got sick on Christmas Day, but it is January 6 now and I don't think this is the same illness.  I think two separate illnesses - both from his loving father - ran into each other and overlapped.  Right now he seems to have bronchitis.  He is up coughing a lot. Hopefully he gets better soon.

Tonight is the Night

Tonight is the night we can finally cloth diaper overnight.  Canada Post has been extremely slow for the holidays, and apparently our regular mail carrier isn't working right now for whatever reason, so our mail has been even more delayed than it would have been.  I have ordered 3 big shipments of cloth diapers, and am still waiting on one of them - one which should have been delivered today, but wasn't.

Last night I finally got my bamboo fitted diapers and my wool covers.  The bamboo had to be properly prepped (10 washes to reach full absorbency, but I did 6), and the wool had to be lanolized, so I couldn't use them last night.

Lanolizing wool is pretty straightforward, even though there are a ton of different interpretations of the instructions.  Basically you just need to make sure your lanolin is properly dissolved and suspended in tepid water with the appropriate wool wash or baby shampoo, and then you soak your cover.  I used more lanolin than I'd read was necessary, because I knew my covers needed to be lanolized before first use, and I don't want to end up with a cover leaking straight through in the middle of the night (fingers crossed that doesn't happen to me anyway).  I also soaked the covers for over 3 hours instead of the 15-60 minutes I'd read in most instructions.  Like I said, I don't want to end up with a leaking cover.

After the lanolizing was done I gently squeezed out my covers (never wring out your wool), and then I put them in the washing machine for a spin cycle.  This was a trick I was very glad to have come across in my reading.  You're not supposed to machine wash your wool because the agitation can ruin it, but when it's spinning it's just staying flat against the side of the tub.  It worked like a charm, and those babies came out with no excess water in them.  To air dry the rest of the way I laid them flat on top of an overturned laundry basket and positioned them so that the fan in my room (that I have running every night) was blowing on them for 8 hours.  They were totally dry in about 12-13 hours.  Much better than the 2-3 days some other people experience!

So tonight I am taking the plunge.  I have to admit, as much as I've read that a good fitted diaper with a wool cover is pretty much a bullet-proof night-time solution, I am still nervous.  When I've described the system to people they've said "A wool cover?  Won't that leak?"  I have rattled off everything I've read.  "No!  It doesn't leak because wool is highly absorbent, but also water resistant.  The lanolin repels the liquid, and it's also breathable, so the liquid has a chance to evaporate a bit, blah blah blah."  So yes, I know all of this.  But having never experienced it myself, I am still nervous.  I want to be a wool lover.  It's surprisingly easy to care for, and with all the good things I've read about it I feel like I already am a wool lover.  I just hope it doesn't fail me tonight.

I am going to add both bamboo and hemp doublers to whichever style of fitted I choose to put on Noah tonight (I haven't decided between the Bamboozle Stretch or the Bumboo).  I think it'll be good for my peace of mind to overstuff, and then in the future I can adjust the absorbency lower if I need to.  These particular diapers are pretty trim, so extra stuffing will be tolerable for Noah.  I double stuffed a pocket diaper with microfiber for naptime once, and Noah cried until I came and changed his diaper into a thinner one... he hated being overstuffed.  But I can add some super absorbent hemp to these diapers without him feeling overstuffed like that.  Actually, the trimmness of the diapers is actually part of the reason why I'm a little nervous.

Alright, wish me luck!  It's almost bedtime!

Expanding Our Cloth Diaper Options

I have been enjoying cloth diapering for the past month, but there is no denying that there is a lot more bum changing going on my house.  Cloth diapers hold a lot less than disposables.  I actually did a test today that basically determined that each of my inserts only holds 100mL (3.3oz) of fluid before fluid starts compressing out.  This is true for both my microfiber and bamboo inserts, which surprised me, since bamboo is supposedly more absorbent.  Apparently it is only more trim, not more absorbent.

I refuse to double the microfiber inserts, because the diapers get uncomfortably bulky.  I have doubled the trimmer bamboo inserts, but the diaper still gets pretty bulky, and Noah still leaked out of it within 3 hours.  Doubling up the inserts I have isn't a great option, in my opinion, just because of the bulkiness.

More diaper changing isn't really a bad thing.  Just because a disposable diaper can hold 15 ounces of pee doesn't mean that you should LET your baby sit in all that urine.  But still, it would be nice if I could run errands for a couple of hours in the afternoon without the cloth diaper leaking.

I have also been wanting to try cloth diapering overnight.  I haven't done this so far because I was fairly certain that none of my current cloth diaper options would work (now I know that they won't, after doing that experiment earlier this evening).  Noah isn't even that much of a heavy wetter anymore, since he nurses less than he used to and isn't nursing overnight anymore.  But even using two bamboo inserts only gives me 6-7oz of absorbing capabilities... this pretty much guarantees a leaky diaper in the wee hours of the morning.

I'd been planning on buying a variety of hemp inserts, hoping that they would absorb a lot more, and allow me to cloth diaper at night.  I wasn't in a big hurry, because one disposable a day wasn't really bothering me.

However, last night I read something that lit a fire under my ass, so to speak.  A few months ago I was completely unaware that cloth diapers had toxins and carcinogens in them.  And a month ago, when I started cloth diapering, I was still mostly unaware.  I knew they contained "chemicals", but not much beyond that.

Then I read THIS.  And I kind of freaked out. I didn't know about the two big toxins in disposable diapers (Dioxin and Sodium Polyacrylate). I didn't know that Dioxin is one of the highest cancer-causing agents known.  I didn't know that there were no safe levels of exposure to dioxin.  I didn't know that it caused liver damage, immune system suppression, and possibly genetic damage.

I didn't know that Sodium Polyacrylate, which is what causes those little gel crystals that we sometimes find on our baby's bums, has been reported to cause severe skin irritations, oozing blood from perineum and scrotal tissues, fever, vomiting and staph infections in babies.  I didn't know that it was banned from tampons in 1985 because of its link to Toxic Shock Syndrome. What the heck is it still doing in diapers?! I didn't know that it has killed children after ingesting as little as 5 grams of it.  I didn't know that it causes female organ problems, slows healing wounds, and causes fatigue and weight loss to the employees in the factories that manufacture it.

I didn't know any of this!!  How are disposable diapers even allowed to contain these things?!

Maybe I'm only using one disposable diaper a day.  But that one diaper is sitting on my kid's genitals for 12 hours.  That's 12 hours of exposure to carcinogens and toxins.

NO, thank you.

So even though I previously stated that my main reason for cloth diapering is the cost savings, I opened up my wallet and ordered some heavy duty overnight diapering paraphernalia.  I'm pulling out the big guns.  I didn't really want to fool around here, because I want to get those disposable diapers off my baby's butt as soon as possible.

So I ordered 3 Bumboo Fitted Diapers:

and 3 Stretch Bamboozle Fitted diapers, by Tots Bots:

And 2 Kissaluvs Wool Lover Diaper Covers:

I know, that wool cover looks really weird if you've never seen it before.  And I'm not 100% sure I'm going to love this particular cover, but it was honestly the only option in stock at any of the Canadian cloth diaper online stores I know of.  Hopefully it'll do the trick, because they were expensive.

However, I am pretty confident in my choice of fitted diapers, although I really wish they were stay-dry diapers (lined with fleece or suede cloth).  I will use fleece liners in them, but in my experience, my fleece liners shift around a LOT.  I might end up cutting out my own, so they can cover the whole inside of the diaper.

I also ordered 2 Flip day packs.  I don't necessarily think the inserts are going to be any more absorbent than my Kawaii inserts, but I am finding it very annoying to pack so many cloth diapers when I'm going out of the house for the day.  Cloth diapers take up a lot of space in the diaper bag!  With Flip diapers, I would only need to pack one extra cover, and as many inserts as I think I would need for the amount of time I'll be gone.  The inserts sit on top of the cover, which is wipeable.  When you change the diaper, you typically would just take out the used insert and put in a fresh one. You only need to change the cover if it's soiled or starting to smell like pee.  

On top of all that, I ordered a variety of hemp liners and doublers to use in my pocket diapers and under the Flip inserts.  Hemp is very trim, but supposedly very absorbent.  Hopefully this will extend Noah's diaper-wearing time when we're out and about, and stop me from being tempted to bust out a disposable for those times when diaper changes every hour and a half just aren't feasible.

I spent a lot of money on diapers today.  Money I wasn't planning on spending.  But after finding out what I found out about disposables, money became much less of an issue.  I might be cheap  frugal, but I do value my son's health, and I pretty much wanted to throw up when I found out that for the past 21 months of his life he's spent the vast majority of his time with carcinogens sitting against his skin.

I can't wait to get my new diapers and try them out!  And if you have a great cloth diapering system that works for long periods of time and/or overnight, tell me about it!  I love hearing what works for other people.