I realize that much of my recent blogging has been about the Rookie in our midst. Not to omit the Firstborn from her rightful place in the blogosphere, today's piece is about her.
We have tried to instill a certain degree of autonomy in our preschooler because studies have shown that it is healthy for a child to exhibit independence in a safe home environment. Unfortunately, our child blatantly refuses to acknowledge, much less accept, this autonomy (except in those rare situations when we stress conforming to societal norms, such as exhibiting appropriate social behavior in public). While we try to educate our daughter that it is generally unacceptable to poo one's pants and subsequently remove one's socks, put them on one's hands, pick up the poop, and parade it around the house, we also have placed importance on the ability to dress and undress oneself. Too much importance, apparently, as the inherent talent most 3-year-olds possess is the ability to sense what is meaningful to parents and that they must destroy it.
Most kids her age, however, are also quite adept at removing all of their clothing (most frequently in the supermarket or other unsanctioned locales) even if their proficiency in donning clothing leaves a bit to be desired. Not so with our daughter, whose tactic remains to be either teary-eyed caterwauling or going limp when attempts are made to train her on this developmental stage.
It appears that this battle for independence is going to be hard won, but we will manage to force this autonomy upon our child just as nations force political systems on other nations. After all, it is for her own good.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Diapering options: Can of worms number two
I have friends who are really environmentally conscious people. They follow every available "green" trend out there to the best of their abilities in their efforts to reduce their environmental impact. I applaud their efforts. As part of their "greenitude" they choose to diaper their little ones with cloth. All of them are SAHMs (Stay-At-Home-Moms). Why does that matter? Read on.
I am an active duty Army mom. Once I return to work and return to business as usual, I will be away from my kids for a full 12 hours per day AT LEAST. I will pump so that I may continue to breastfeed, even though I'll have to do it in bathrooms and locker rooms because there is no "nursing mom" room in my office building and I don't have a private office. This is me, doing the best for my kids. The last thing I want to do is spend the precious little time each day I have with them washing dirty diapers.
Let's look at the options. Cloth diapers pose a big up-front cost in about $15-$18 per diaper. Most starter packs of cloth diapers come in sets of one dozen. My son goes through about 10 diapers per day, maybe more or less but it's a good average. I'd need to start with two dozen just to ensure I'd have enough AND I'd be doing laundry daily just to ensure that he is able to have clean diapers while I'm washing the dirty ones. If I wait two days, I'm screwed because there won't be diapers for him while the others are being washed. Additionally, assuming I'd be using cotton, I'd be doing each load of diapers three times according to the recommended guidelines by the Real Diaper Industry Association. This is three loads of hot-water wash (probably not full loads because a dozen diapers roughly equates to as many pairs of socks in your wash), and three separate trips through the dryer. The "cha-ching" to both the water and electric companies makes me nauseated. We use cold water to wash everything but whites once per WEEK right now. Three hot-water loads per day??? Even if I were a lazier type of parent (and who isn't?) and chose only to hot-water wash them once, it's still 6 more hot water loads than we normally do.
I am too lazy to figure out how many gallons of water are used in each wash cycle or how many kilowatt hours in each wash-and-dry cycle, but we'd effectively be doubling our consumption of washing and drying each week if I went the one-wash-only route (it would quadruple our consumption if I did the three-wash-sanitizing route). Our consumption of fuel oil (which heats our home and our water heater) is currently only about 4 gallons per day, but I estimate that would probably double with all the extra use of hot water. Fuel oil costs about $4.00 per gallon where I live. I also estimate an extra $20-30 per month on our electricity bill for the energy use. Of course, we'd be doubling (or quadrupling) our detergent use as well. Then there is wear-and-tear on the washer and dryer to consider. Using it that much more frequently means I'd need to start saving up for the replacements and/or repairs. The hidden costs of cloth diapering are astounding.
So perhaps a diaper service would work to our advantage and save us those pennies for energy costs, the wear-and-tear on the washer and dryer, and all that (hot) water! They can ensure sterilization and deliver the diapers to my door. But... the AVERAGE price is $20 per week. I pay $40 a MONTH for my disposables! How is cloth diapering supposed to save me time or money?
To be fair about the inconvenience, cloth diapers have come a long way since my own infancy. Many companies offer pre-folded diapers with waterproof covers that secure with hook-and-loop or snap closures. No more folding it all up yourself or having to use a scary pin on a squirming infant. It now takes about as much time to diaper a baby in cloth as it does in disposable. Of course, if your kid is like mine, be prepared to "waste" a diaper here and there because he wasn't done with his "business" before you started the changing process.
As for the environmental impact, I read an article stating disposable diapers account for 2% of waste in the U.S. This means 98% is "something else." Additionally, disposable diaper companies (the largest being Proctor and Gamble) have come under political pressure by environmental groups and financial pressure considering the fact that the "inconvenience" has pretty much been taken out of using cloth. Now, even disposable diapers can be recycled. In uber-green states like Washington, some diaper services are now picking up used disposables and running them through the same processes they use to sanitize their cloth diapers, breaking apart disposables into recyclable components, and reducing landfill input.
The bottom line here is that MY bottom line stays in the black when I use disposables. It works for my family. When I'm away from my kids so frequently, I want as much time with them as possible. Additionally, my daycare center (which is flexible on many things) still requires the use of disposables in their centers. Since many families use cloth during the day and disposables at night or on trips (for better leak protection and to avoid having to cart around dirties), it hardly seems worth it to me to bother with cloth. The one MAJOR benefit I see to using cloth over disposables is that potty training happens faster with kids in cloth because they feel the wetness/dirtiness faster than a disposable-diaper-wearing kid would.
Ultimately, each family must come to a decision about what is important to them. SAHMs get to spend all their time (if they want) with their little ones. So, what's a few loads of laundry in the mix? No big deal. Studies have also shown that in the longer term, cloth is cheaper than disposables (mostly because of that whole early-potty-training bit; kids in disposables potty train around age three and kids in cloth do it a year earlier on average). There is no judgment here against anyone deciding to use cloth over disposable diapers. If you can do it, I think that's great. It just doesn't work for us. And within this blog, I have detailed several reasons why it doesn't work for us.
Still, I find it amazing to see that people get up in arms over these decisions about whether to use cloth or disposable, to share a bed or not share a bed, to breastfeed or bottle-feed, to use organic or homemade baby foods or buy it from a jar, to stay at home or have a job, to home school or send them off to public or private school, etc. My litmus test is my own kids. Both seem very happy and healthy. My 3-year-old is well-adjusted, socialized, has an extensive vocabulary (that often surprises many people), and enjoys life. She IS life in a 35-pound bag of meat and bones. My nearly-6-week-old is smiling at me and cooing, gaining weight at an alarming rate for a breastfed baby, and growing like a weed.
The fact that we have options is great. We can tailor our child-rearing practices to meet the needs of our families and our world. Who doesn't love that?
I am an active duty Army mom. Once I return to work and return to business as usual, I will be away from my kids for a full 12 hours per day AT LEAST. I will pump so that I may continue to breastfeed, even though I'll have to do it in bathrooms and locker rooms because there is no "nursing mom" room in my office building and I don't have a private office. This is me, doing the best for my kids. The last thing I want to do is spend the precious little time each day I have with them washing dirty diapers.
Let's look at the options. Cloth diapers pose a big up-front cost in about $15-$18 per diaper. Most starter packs of cloth diapers come in sets of one dozen. My son goes through about 10 diapers per day, maybe more or less but it's a good average. I'd need to start with two dozen just to ensure I'd have enough AND I'd be doing laundry daily just to ensure that he is able to have clean diapers while I'm washing the dirty ones. If I wait two days, I'm screwed because there won't be diapers for him while the others are being washed. Additionally, assuming I'd be using cotton, I'd be doing each load of diapers three times according to the recommended guidelines by the Real Diaper Industry Association. This is three loads of hot-water wash (probably not full loads because a dozen diapers roughly equates to as many pairs of socks in your wash), and three separate trips through the dryer. The "cha-ching" to both the water and electric companies makes me nauseated. We use cold water to wash everything but whites once per WEEK right now. Three hot-water loads per day??? Even if I were a lazier type of parent (and who isn't?) and chose only to hot-water wash them once, it's still 6 more hot water loads than we normally do.
I am too lazy to figure out how many gallons of water are used in each wash cycle or how many kilowatt hours in each wash-and-dry cycle, but we'd effectively be doubling our consumption of washing and drying each week if I went the one-wash-only route (it would quadruple our consumption if I did the three-wash-sanitizing route). Our consumption of fuel oil (which heats our home and our water heater) is currently only about 4 gallons per day, but I estimate that would probably double with all the extra use of hot water. Fuel oil costs about $4.00 per gallon where I live. I also estimate an extra $20-30 per month on our electricity bill for the energy use. Of course, we'd be doubling (or quadrupling) our detergent use as well. Then there is wear-and-tear on the washer and dryer to consider. Using it that much more frequently means I'd need to start saving up for the replacements and/or repairs. The hidden costs of cloth diapering are astounding.
So perhaps a diaper service would work to our advantage and save us those pennies for energy costs, the wear-and-tear on the washer and dryer, and all that (hot) water! They can ensure sterilization and deliver the diapers to my door. But... the AVERAGE price is $20 per week. I pay $40 a MONTH for my disposables! How is cloth diapering supposed to save me time or money?
To be fair about the inconvenience, cloth diapers have come a long way since my own infancy. Many companies offer pre-folded diapers with waterproof covers that secure with hook-and-loop or snap closures. No more folding it all up yourself or having to use a scary pin on a squirming infant. It now takes about as much time to diaper a baby in cloth as it does in disposable. Of course, if your kid is like mine, be prepared to "waste" a diaper here and there because he wasn't done with his "business" before you started the changing process.
As for the environmental impact, I read an article stating disposable diapers account for 2% of waste in the U.S. This means 98% is "something else." Additionally, disposable diaper companies (the largest being Proctor and Gamble) have come under political pressure by environmental groups and financial pressure considering the fact that the "inconvenience" has pretty much been taken out of using cloth. Now, even disposable diapers can be recycled. In uber-green states like Washington, some diaper services are now picking up used disposables and running them through the same processes they use to sanitize their cloth diapers, breaking apart disposables into recyclable components, and reducing landfill input.
The bottom line here is that MY bottom line stays in the black when I use disposables. It works for my family. When I'm away from my kids so frequently, I want as much time with them as possible. Additionally, my daycare center (which is flexible on many things) still requires the use of disposables in their centers. Since many families use cloth during the day and disposables at night or on trips (for better leak protection and to avoid having to cart around dirties), it hardly seems worth it to me to bother with cloth. The one MAJOR benefit I see to using cloth over disposables is that potty training happens faster with kids in cloth because they feel the wetness/dirtiness faster than a disposable-diaper-wearing kid would.
Ultimately, each family must come to a decision about what is important to them. SAHMs get to spend all their time (if they want) with their little ones. So, what's a few loads of laundry in the mix? No big deal. Studies have also shown that in the longer term, cloth is cheaper than disposables (mostly because of that whole early-potty-training bit; kids in disposables potty train around age three and kids in cloth do it a year earlier on average). There is no judgment here against anyone deciding to use cloth over disposable diapers. If you can do it, I think that's great. It just doesn't work for us. And within this blog, I have detailed several reasons why it doesn't work for us.
Still, I find it amazing to see that people get up in arms over these decisions about whether to use cloth or disposable, to share a bed or not share a bed, to breastfeed or bottle-feed, to use organic or homemade baby foods or buy it from a jar, to stay at home or have a job, to home school or send them off to public or private school, etc. My litmus test is my own kids. Both seem very happy and healthy. My 3-year-old is well-adjusted, socialized, has an extensive vocabulary (that often surprises many people), and enjoys life. She IS life in a 35-pound bag of meat and bones. My nearly-6-week-old is smiling at me and cooing, gaining weight at an alarming rate for a breastfed baby, and growing like a weed.
The fact that we have options is great. We can tailor our child-rearing practices to meet the needs of our families and our world. Who doesn't love that?
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Co-sleeping and the can of worms
The can of worms...
Everyone has an opinion about whether or not sharing a room with a newborn is wise, safe, and healthy. But I must clarify... Co-sleeping means simply sharing a room, while bed-sharing (also known as family beds) is a sub-component of rooming in. Most people think of sharing a bed when they hear co-sleeping being discussed.
Here's my opinion and why I have it. Co-sleeping (as in, rooming in) is a fantastic idea for newborns. Nursing on demand coupled with new babies and trying to get acquainted with one another, learn what their cries mean, and all that goes with newbornism make it more practical for rooming in for those early days. However, bed-sharing is an absolute no-no. I say this with the caveat that I admit to falling asleep while nursing my son in bed. However, he has never spent an entire night in our bed and neither has our daughter. Mostly it is not for the fear of suffocation or any reason that is most frequently listed by most anti-bed-sharing folks.
Simply stated, I do not want to create a monster that will take over my sleeping space. I paid a lot of money for my fantastic Sleep Number bed, and I don't want to share it with my little ones. Selfish? Not really. I have given them each their own sleeping spaces, and I want them to use it. I mean, siblings just don't get made when the other kids are sharing your bed every night. At least, not in my world.
Children are very keen on adapting to change. Good or bad. They can and will adapt to being in a different room from the parents. Just as, if given the chance to sleep in your bed every night (or even just when they are sick), they will adapt to that so that breaking the habit becomes more and more difficult. Bottom line, a five-year-old simply does not need to be in bed with his/her parents. I want my children to be individuated, independent, self-confident, etc. Although I will not say that these traits cannot be imparted among children who sleep in a "family bed," I will say it's much easier to identify these traits among kids who have their own space.
Now, if you choose to comment on this blog, be nice. This is just my opinion and why I choose this option among all child-rearing options out there. Nobody is making you do it too.
Everyone has an opinion about whether or not sharing a room with a newborn is wise, safe, and healthy. But I must clarify... Co-sleeping means simply sharing a room, while bed-sharing (also known as family beds) is a sub-component of rooming in. Most people think of sharing a bed when they hear co-sleeping being discussed.
Here's my opinion and why I have it. Co-sleeping (as in, rooming in) is a fantastic idea for newborns. Nursing on demand coupled with new babies and trying to get acquainted with one another, learn what their cries mean, and all that goes with newbornism make it more practical for rooming in for those early days. However, bed-sharing is an absolute no-no. I say this with the caveat that I admit to falling asleep while nursing my son in bed. However, he has never spent an entire night in our bed and neither has our daughter. Mostly it is not for the fear of suffocation or any reason that is most frequently listed by most anti-bed-sharing folks.
Simply stated, I do not want to create a monster that will take over my sleeping space. I paid a lot of money for my fantastic Sleep Number bed, and I don't want to share it with my little ones. Selfish? Not really. I have given them each their own sleeping spaces, and I want them to use it. I mean, siblings just don't get made when the other kids are sharing your bed every night. At least, not in my world.
Children are very keen on adapting to change. Good or bad. They can and will adapt to being in a different room from the parents. Just as, if given the chance to sleep in your bed every night (or even just when they are sick), they will adapt to that so that breaking the habit becomes more and more difficult. Bottom line, a five-year-old simply does not need to be in bed with his/her parents. I want my children to be individuated, independent, self-confident, etc. Although I will not say that these traits cannot be imparted among children who sleep in a "family bed," I will say it's much easier to identify these traits among kids who have their own space.
Now, if you choose to comment on this blog, be nice. This is just my opinion and why I choose this option among all child-rearing options out there. Nobody is making you do it too.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Feels like the first time.... almost.
I have noted several similarities between our girl and our boy. And, despite the obvious biological difference, many other differences as well.
Our son J is already 4 weeks old. Actually, he is 4 1/2 weeks old now. At 4 weeks, he can lift his head up (which he did at two days old in the hospital). His sister did the same. Thus, I was not surprised by this (this time). He has also smiled, cooed, and gave me a full-on belly laugh which I really wish I'd caught on tape (if not for the fact that he was nursing at the time).
A major difference between our son and daughter is how exceptionally needy the boy is. He wants to be held much more than his sister. He cannot be put down for long before he is yowling to be picked up again. The baby swing, though not used nearly as much for E, has been a savior for J. Well, a savior for us so we can put J down while we do laundry or something. He was in the swing long enough for me to clean the poop out of my daughter's underwear (she had an accident at school today), but shortly after he was wailing. As of now, he is peacefully curled up against my chest as I type with the keyboard sitting atop the Boppy pillow behind him.
In similar parenting efforts, J moved to his own room last night (at about 4 1/2 weeks), just as his sister did 3 years ago when she was his age. I am thankful that the effort to do so went off well and we all got more sleep than the previous weeks. This would be a huge can of worms because everyone has his/her own opinion on it (and there is mounds of research to go either way) but I do not consider co-sleeping (as in, sleeping in the same room - NOT the same as bed-sharing) beyond one month worthwhile. I do not consider bed-sharing to be a good idea in the slightest (although I admit to subconsciously caving in to this as I have fallen asleep while nursing several times). I will address these concerns in a separate blog, but the main point here is that when co-sleeping I hear every little squeak and peep he makes. This makes my night very long and arduous and sleep is fleeting.
Delightfully, our son seems to be as charming and as curious about the world as his sister was. He also seems to be a lover of his own image in a mirror and already seems to know when a camera (or camera phone) is nearby. He will be a flirt, and I'm excited to see his personality develop. Even if he's a little needy right now.
Our son J is already 4 weeks old. Actually, he is 4 1/2 weeks old now. At 4 weeks, he can lift his head up (which he did at two days old in the hospital). His sister did the same. Thus, I was not surprised by this (this time). He has also smiled, cooed, and gave me a full-on belly laugh which I really wish I'd caught on tape (if not for the fact that he was nursing at the time).
A major difference between our son and daughter is how exceptionally needy the boy is. He wants to be held much more than his sister. He cannot be put down for long before he is yowling to be picked up again. The baby swing, though not used nearly as much for E, has been a savior for J. Well, a savior for us so we can put J down while we do laundry or something. He was in the swing long enough for me to clean the poop out of my daughter's underwear (she had an accident at school today), but shortly after he was wailing. As of now, he is peacefully curled up against my chest as I type with the keyboard sitting atop the Boppy pillow behind him.
In similar parenting efforts, J moved to his own room last night (at about 4 1/2 weeks), just as his sister did 3 years ago when she was his age. I am thankful that the effort to do so went off well and we all got more sleep than the previous weeks. This would be a huge can of worms because everyone has his/her own opinion on it (and there is mounds of research to go either way) but I do not consider co-sleeping (as in, sleeping in the same room - NOT the same as bed-sharing) beyond one month worthwhile. I do not consider bed-sharing to be a good idea in the slightest (although I admit to subconsciously caving in to this as I have fallen asleep while nursing several times). I will address these concerns in a separate blog, but the main point here is that when co-sleeping I hear every little squeak and peep he makes. This makes my night very long and arduous and sleep is fleeting.
Delightfully, our son seems to be as charming and as curious about the world as his sister was. He also seems to be a lover of his own image in a mirror and already seems to know when a camera (or camera phone) is nearby. He will be a flirt, and I'm excited to see his personality develop. Even if he's a little needy right now.
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