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. 

:)