I am slowly going Hippie 1,2,3,4,5,6...

Switch?

Well - not exactly.

I'm on a quest for good hair.  I know, I have decent hair - but I think it could be better!  My hair started out straight as a baby, and as I got older it got curlier right up until I got pregnant with Inara:

All Natural Curl

The above photo was taken August 2010, and was styled by scrunching some mousse in my hair straight from the shower and letting it air dry - I love it. 

In the beginning of my pregnancy my curls looked more like this:

And near the end, this was my air-drying result:

My curl has left the building...






Even now, almost 3 months since Inara was born, my hair is still as straight as can be, but I'm on a mission to change that. 

I have been looking into "the Curly Girl Method" also delightfully called "No Poo", for a few years now, and I think I'm going to try it.  What it is, is a no Shampoo cleansing routine that changes your scalp's ph, and trains your body to produce less oil for your hair - thus improving the natural texture (which I hope for me = curls!)

The science behind the method is that our body is meant to be rather self sustaining - we were perfectly designed to take care of the little details, but we live in a consumer society, and these days there are 101 products out there to clean, moisturize, deodorize, volumnize, etc etc..  that our bodies don't end up getting the chance to do what they were meant to do.  You know when you wash your hair, and the next day your hair seems a little limp, and the day after that it's greasy and in desperate need of a cleaning again?  It's because that initial shampoo was done with harsh chemicals (same ingredients as your dish soap in the kitchen - true story, take a look), and it strips the hair of it's natural oil - then your body panics, and produces MORE oil to compensate - but don't strip the oil, and your body will adjust to stop producing so much. 

Also, you know how awesome and slidey your hair feels when you condition it?  Know what that is?  Silicone and Wax.  It coats the hair shaft and actually weighs down hair - and it's one of the main reasons that we need to put that harsh shampoo in our hair, to break down the wax... but then your hair is so dry from the shampoo, you need to put the silicone back in to make it manageable again!  It's a viscous cycle, and I think it's time I broke it! 

I've decided to go shampoo free, and see what kind of hair I end up with!  I've read a lot of blogs, and watched a lot of Youtube videos on the subject, and it is a simple enough process - you give your hair one last deep cleaning with the harsh drug store shampoo (to strip any silicone or wax), and then you switch to washing with a 100% organic natural shampoo bar, or baking soda mixture, and condition with a diluted apple cider vinegar rinse.  It's that simple!  Plus, you don't do it every day!  I would be able to wash my hair once a week, and have volume and (hopefully) curl the other 6 days! 

I found a girl on Youtube who has the kind of hair I have always dreamed of having, and this is her routine - she washes once a week, and lets her hair air dry, and this is her result:

Her hair is gorgeous, full of volume, and she says she never has to use any hair spray because her hair just does whatever she wants it to do now! 

Also - I don't know about you, but I spent an entire season of Survivor loving Ozzy's natural curly hair - his hair was amazing, and I know he wasn't shampooing for the 30+ days he was out on that island!:

It's not all good news however - it's a process, and there is kind of a rough transition period where your hair is getting used to not needing as much oil, so you end up with some greasy hair for a few weeks - from the reviews it sounds like 4-8 weeks seems to be the average transition period.  So lots of hats, buns and updo's during that time.  But once your hair figures out the new routine, your hair is better than ever and ridiculously healthy! 

I found a blog in which a lady took pictures every week of her transition to Shampoo free:
Week One:  

Week Two: 

Week Three:

Week Four:

And then 6 months later (with only washing with the baking soda routine twice a month:

Greasy Hair be gone! 



What I'm looking forward to the most (Aside from the curls) is being able to look good with next day hair, and even third day hair.  With a newborn I've found that my usual "every second day Shower" is becoming more and more difficult to maintain.  It's become an ordeal - even if I manage to pop under the water for a few, I never have time to dry or style my hair afterward, so it usually ends up back in a pony tail, only to look greasy the next day.  My hair is very thin, which is part of my problem - when it lays flat to my head, it gets greasy very quickly, especially if I do any sort of styling with it.  Now don't get me wrong, I still will be showering, and cleaning my body, but to be able to tie my hair up and have a 3 minute shower and not have to deal with styling would give me so much more freedom!  That's usually my biggest frustration with finding time to shower, is knowing that I need a good 30 minutes in order to shower (wash and condition my hair) and then dry and style it so that I can last at least the next day before I have to do it all over again! 

Bonus - the cost!  How many times I've shelled out hard earned cash for the special volume shampoo, curl cream, hair spray etc etc I can't even tell you - it's been a small fortune for sure.  But to be able to use the equivalent of 1/2 cup of baking soda, and 1 cup of apple cider vinegar a MONTH to maintain my hair would be amazing!  I could probably get away with only buying my ingredients once a year, and be set for my styling aids! 

I've already switched to a completely natural hair dye (henna) to maintain my rich auburn hair color (and cover the greys), because I didn't like how much hair I lost down the drain after other dye processes (my hair is too thin to see that much fall out at each shampoo!), so naturally this is the next step!  (Plus $5 for a package of Henna that does my whole head +some as opposed to $150 at the salon, or 3x $25 drug store kits!  I'll take the $5 - plus Henna doesnt' really fade, it grows out, so you cover roots but you usually still have the vibrant hair for several weeks!!!  (I usually go about 8 weeks between dye jobs - or more... it's been more recently...)

I love home made beauty secrets, like honey as a face mask (acne be gone!), and Avocado as a deep hair conditioner, or an Asprin paste as a firming mask, or even Olive Oil as a makeup remover - I love them because they are cheap, and I'm cheap, and they work better than anything I could find at a beauty counter for a fraction of the price.  I love to spend an evening treating myself to some home spa treatments, but we hardly have the budget to fit all those little extra's in, so natural is #1 in my mind!

I grew up with very severe Eczema that covered 90% of my body when I was a child.  It would crack and bleed at all times of the year, and was extremely itchy.  I used to always have scabs on my legs from scratching at night, and kids would tease me about "Molting" or having "old lady skin".  My mom researched every cream, and technique known to man to help me - but what worked best, was having a warm bath with oatmeal (she would make a little bag out of cheese cloth, and tie it with an elastic and drop it in the water with me) and then coat me head to toe with microwaved Vaseline and put on my PJ's to sleep in.  Once again, a natural product saved the day! 

I still struggled with my eczema right up until University until I discovered an amazing "cure"  I stopped washing with soap/body wash in every shower!  I shower every second day at least (and every day in the summer time) but I only lather up my entire body maybe once a week - otherwise I just spot wash (underarms etc) and rinse with water.  I haven't had a bad spot of eczema in a few years now!  Once again, by taking a step back, and letting my body regulate it's own needs, it ended up working out the problem on it's own!  

I'm going to try to trust in my body a little more - if I let it, I believe it'll take care of a few of those things for me!  And, although I joked about becoming a hippie, don't worry, I'm not going to suddenly start wearing hemp and decide to forgo shaving my legs or anything...  :)

But for right now - I am going Shampoo free - so don't be surprised if I look a little less than stellar this month if you run into me - thank goodness is freezing out there, and no one would fault me for wearing a toque at all times!  (it's a good time of year to try this little experiment!)

I'm going to be taking pictures to share my little transition with you, and then I'll write another blog about the whole ordeal at a later date! 

Hope this works!!

The Baby List #1

I am of that age - the baby age.  A few years ago it was the wedding age, and before that - the clubbing "I'm an adult and can do whatever I want" age.  Now being of the Baby age, I have friends all over the place posting sonogram pictures, and announcing weights, heights, and names of their newest additions.  It's kind of fun, this age, and it's awesome to have so many travel along this path with me.  It takes a little of the guess work out of this whole "parenting" thing. 

And trust me - there is A LOT of guess work. 

Sure you can read books, you can take classes, you can research all you want, but until you meet your little one, it's all guess and check, and hope you do something right.  The thing is, we are all raising different people all with their own needs, wants and personalities, so what works for one will not necessarily work for another - but in having so many other parents to swap stories with, you can at least find a few tips and tricks for a good jumping off point. 

Here's a couple of my own.  I've put together a bit of a list of baby items that I've found I've used a lot, and some not at all.

Now since Inara is only 11 1/2 weeks old, I have a long road ahead of me, and she keeps re-writing the rules, so what works now, may not work in a month.  And there are far too many things to mention, so this will be the first of several lists, but as of right now - these are the goods:

Lets start with Swaddle Blankets:

NO:  Before Inara was born, I read in several sources that these Swaddle Me blankets with the velcro were amazing for getting the little bub to sleep through the night - so I bought a couple packs.  Turns out - MY little darling HATED being swaddled so tight - she's a kicker, and likes to be able to put her hands around her face when she sleeps... after all - she had been doing it for 9 months:

YES:  What I do 100% recommend were these Aden and Anais Muslin Swaddle Cloths.  Now I was a firm believer of "a blanket is a blanket" but these cloths are so light and gauzy they keep my little furnace-baby cool so she doesn't get fussy (seriously, give her 5 minutes in your arms, and her hair will be wet with sweat on the back of her head) - plus they are such large cloths I can bundle her arms close to her chest, and still leave the cloth quite baggy around her legs without the whole thing unraveling on me.  And Bonus - they get softer the more you wash them.  I have two right now, and they are in constant heavy rotation!!

Diapers:


We went through the ringer for diapers, and although I don't have a definite Yes and No for which are good and which are bad, I do have pros and cons for the brands I've tried:

Pampers Swaddlers:  Great at first!  These were the first diapers Inara started out in, we loved them immediately and didn't have any issues until she hit around 8 weeks old, and started sleeping longer at night.  My little one has a pretty set schedule of her morning constitutional (we could all be so lucky) in which she usually goes down between 8-10pm, sleeps about 8-10 hours, wakes with a very heavy wet diaper, drinks 9oz of milk, and then goes back down for another 4 hours.  During that 4 hours is when the soiling happens, and 9 times out of 10 she had a diaper leak when I went to pick her up in the morning.  My baby is a heavy wetter - and the diaper did it's job with containing the bulk, but the next time she peed the dams burst, and her sleeper and the mattress cover was always wet.  It was always that one 4 hour chunk of time that those Pampers could not hack the job - the 8 hour stint was fine, and she was perfectly fine for the rest of the day, but after a week of stripping her crib and her each morning, I turned to my peers.  The results came in - Huggies came out on top...

Huggies:  Now we had used Huggies around week 5-6.  Mostly just running through the diapers we had been given as gifts before we had settled on any specific brand, and I'm still not entirely sure if it was the diaper or the food allergy we also discovered around that time, but Inara developed a horrible rash all across her bottom that had her screaming for several days - we decided that we had better be safe than sorry, and went back to Pampers just to make sure.  The rash healed along with her dietary issues, and she went back to being a happy baby.  But once I ran into my early morning issues with the Pampers, I dug out the Huggies I had packed away and started using those again - no issues in the morning... however, we were now getting leaks during the day....  ugh.  I have a theory, Huggies are better for when baby is sleeping, lying flat - but Pampers holds in better when baby has her feet up kicking and playing.  I'm only guessing, but for my wee one, that seems to be the case.  So now I'm buying two types of diapers in each size?  ... hardly cost effective, especially since I have a very big baby who is gaining weight, and jumping diaper sizes faster than I can finish boxes. 

So for now, until I run out of my remaining Pampers and Huggies I am switching back and forth - she only goes to sleep in a Huggies diaper, and gets changed into a Pamper in the morning - but now a new challenger appears...

Kirkland Brand (Costco Diapers):  I had heard wonderful things about Kirkland - for one, the price 210 diapers for $35 is $0.17 a diaper - I can dig.  Also, I like buying things in bulk, Costco was made for people like me - I like to have a well stocked -  everything - perhaps it's the Virgo in me.... anyway.  I had been weary about trying Kirkland only because I had been told that they are manufactured in the Huggies warehouse, and are essentially Huggies in cheaper form (compare diapers - it's true!), and after Inara's rash incident, I didn't want to buy a giant box of diapers only to find out she was allergic to them or something, but after testing out the huggies again, and not finding the same issue, we decided to go for it, and picked up a box... in a SIZE 3!  (where did my newborn go?) We've tried them a few times, and so far, they seem to be working for both night time wear, AND daytime, so once I've used up the last of my remaining Huggies and Pampers (should be this week!), I think we will be able to confidently buy Kirkland from here on out (I hope so anyway!)


Oh, and as a GIANT NO for diapers brands:

 We were given a small Newborn package of Parents Choice diapers at our Baby Shower, and on one of the first times Inara wore one, she soaked through the diaper, her Onsie, her Sleeper, and Auntie Melissa's shirt....  Needless to say, we didn't use those again.  The material is too thin, and feels cheaply made in comparison to the other name brands.  (This was also the very first time we had any sort of leak issue, and the first time Melissa held Inara...sorry Auntie Melissa!)

And as a jumping off point from that topic, here is a product that was shared with me by one mom, who got it from another - and I feel every mother should have this in their laundry room, as it's kept every single item in Inara's wardrobe stain free (even some second hand items that came to me with a couple marks on them are now back to brand new after using this).  Ladies and Gentlemen (but probably more likely, just ladies) I give you my laundry secret weapon:

For those of you not aware, baby poop comes in all sorts of colors, but the most usual is a very bright mustard yellow, which stains like a you-know-what if you do not put something on it before washing.  A week or so ago, I had the unfortunate experience of having to clean up a diaper blow out - which just so happened took place on my lap, and since there was no putting Inara down, I grabbed the closest things, a light pink burp cloth, and a white bib and collected the offending substance as best I could before booking it to the nursery for a baby deep cleaning.  Once baby was happy and clean I sprayed everything down with my Baby Oxy Clean, and popped it all in the wash.  Everything came out brand new with nothing more than an awful memory to show for it... *shudder*.  Call me a snob, but I won't dress my child in anything with a stain - she's too damn cute to wear anything but the best, so when I bought 3 massive boxes of second hand baby clothes off a woman in a Mommy buy and sell group, I went through everything and examined for stains, and if I found some, I simply sprayed this miracle product on the mark, threw it in the wash, and it was back to brand new and ready for Inara.  Seriously - every mom needs this.  You don't even have to do laundry right away - just spray it on, and toss it in the hamper until laundry day!



Wipes:

Wipes are pretty standard - you want a moistened "paper cloth" to clean up your babies bottom - how hard could that be?   Well, not very.  I don't have a whole lot of opinions of wipes, anything will do really - but there are a few pros and cons about specific brands that I want to break down anyway. 

First of all - I'm not a huge fans of the Bamboo wipes: 

Sure they are organic, and natural and blah blah blah... but they are also so thin that on more than a couple occasions I couldn't get them to separate from each other, which resulted in tearing sheets in small bits - which is extremely frustrating when you are in a public bathroom balancing your child on a fold down change table and holding her ankles up with one hand while attempting to fight with the wipes package with the other.  As well, I found they are not as wet as I would prefer - one really wet wipe can do the job of 3 mildly wet wipes with a hell of a lot less irritation. 

As for the difference between Pampers and Huggies Wipes, I haven't really found one - they are pretty similar, however the containers that come with them, and the way you buy refills DO have a difference!  (oh yes folks, I get excited by wipe containers now... it's come to this). 

The pampers container is simple enough, it's a large white or green plastic container with a large snap lid for adding the wipe refills and a smaller flip up lid with an oval hole for pulling the wipes out.  It came with our first purchase of wipes, and served us fairly well for a while, although often the wipe you want, and the wipe next in line would fail to separate from each other causing me to have to wave my arm up and down in a frenzied attempt to pull them apart (and sometimes resulting in pulling another 3 from the container... again, all the while holding my daughters legs up with the other hand - Mothers are excellent at one handed tasks... usually).  It was an annoyance, but what do you expect from a plastic container?  As for the refills, they came in individually wrapped bundles about an inch and a half thick, that you would just have to unwrap and toss in the bottom of your container under the current wipes when they were getting low - no biggie. 

But then I bought Huggies wipes.  I didn't switch brands for any reason other than I was picking up diapers and wipes at Costco, and they don't sell the Pampers - so I grabbed a box of Huggies.  It also came with a container - but their container was SO MUCH BETTER!!

The Huggies container was outfitted with a sort of silicone grip where the wipe comes out - which works to separate each wipe, and pull the next one up, ready for action!  Had I known I could have saved myself all the arm waving, I would have switched sooner!  Also, the button to pop the top of this container is made with the same silicone material, which has a satisfying texture to it - I can't explain it, it's squishy... I like buttons... its the little things.  Come over some time, I'll let you try it, and then you'll understand.  Until then, please stop judging me. 

It also came with a little thin Travel container for the diaper bag - which Pampers didn't have, so another +1 Huggies. 

As for their refills, they did that right too - rather than buying little individial packages (which in the Pampers container you could only fit about 1 and 3/4 of one, so you could only add one bundle at a time which left room in the container, and I already expressed to you my love of having everything well stocked...).  You can buy the Huggies in large resealable packages:

And within each package they are organized in stacks (almost like they made a compression mark between sections, but there is no unwrapping or anything involved) that perfectly fit into your thin travel container - so one stack for the diaper bag container, or you can grab however thick a stack you need to fill up your Nursery Container.  Genius.  After so many years, I would really expect nothing but perfected details from these companies.  As for the wipe themselves, Huggies are slightly thicker - but honestly as long as it's wet and doesn't dry out baby's skin, a wipe is a wipe. 


Now as I type all this out, I am very aware that I just spent an hour plus writing about diapers and wipes, and comparing notes about leakage, wetness and squishy buttons, I make no appologies, this is my life now, and I'm writing these things down, so that my next pregnant friend reading my blog can go straight for the Huggies wipes container, skip the Parents Choice Diapers, and order herself some Muslin cloths, which are three less things she needs to guess about. 

I'm a strong advocate of learning from other people's mistakes and experiences, but how the hell are you ever going to know about them unless they spend an hour or two writing it all out, no matter how miniscule it all may seem?

So to my Preggo's, future preggo's and curious friends who probably have a baby shower or two to attend in the next bit - I hope you've picked up a tip or two, or at the very least, I've amused you by my writing and glimpse into my new world.

Stay tuned for the next installment - although when that will be is completely up to my daughter. 

:)