Dealing With Anger & Letting It Go

Yesterday morning I had a run-in with someone who made a less than desirable comment on one of my Facebook posts, and I reacted out of anger.  The only reason I bring this up and write a blog about it is because I thought I had moved past being an angry person and my reaction to the situation upset me.  Anger like all emotions, serves a purpose and can be healthy.  At what point does it become destructive?

When I was younger I had a bit of an issue with anger.  That's an understatement - I was an extremely angry person.  It took many years but I got to the root of it, worked out some demons, and finally became a sane, rational person again.  Basically, after years of being a punching bag to my peers, low self-esteem, and some bad situations, I had had enough with the world and something inside of me broke and all of this rage came flooding out of me.

On the one hand, it was good for me - I stopped letting people take advantage of me as I had for most of my life.  I stood up for myself.  I had such low self-esteem back then that when someone befriended me I felt that since I wasn't worthy of friendship to begin with, I'd better do what I can to keep them around.  And so I lost a lot of myself to that.  I became a people pleaser (those of you who knew me in college probably find the thought of that impossible).  I made bad choices in many of the friends that I kept around and they took advantage of me time & time again.  I poured all of me into every friendship I ever made, because if I had friends it meant that I was worth something, right?  I would have done anything to not rock the boat with anyone.  If there was a problem it had to be my fault and I took ownership of it right away whether or not I should have.  I wouldn't allow myself to express opposing opinions on anything, wouldn't call anyone out on how ridiculous they were, all for fear of being made fun of or abandoned.  It didn't matter as long as everyone was happy.

At some point I got tired of it all.  Something inside me started screaming, "I deserve better than this!" and this dormant rage was unleashed on the world.  I was angry at everyone and everything.  And in a way, I deserved to be.  I needed to be.  It's how I found my backbone again, my voice.  I was tired of being walked all over, tired of keeping my mouth shut just to keep the peace when nobody around me seemed to care how I was affected by anything. I was tired of giving and never getting anything back.

That part is fine, that's the healthy anger.  We should stick up for ourselves.  We should not let ourselves be walking doormats.  We are worthy of love & friendship, and it is possible to maintain that through arguments and differences of opinion.  Anger helps us protect ourselves.

But not when it's your only reaction, and to the extreme.  I was never just a little angry; it was like a switch - all or nothing.  I would react with the same amount of anger whether you accidentally bumped into me or if you started screaming obscenities in my face.  I couldn't get it under control, and it was a problem.  Add in college, some alcohol (and other things) and I was a total mess.  Luckily, I was never physically expressive with it beyond slamming some doors and throwing french fries across the room.  But I'm sure I damaged a few relationships because of it and I do have some regrets about that.

It took a lot of soul searching and hard work, but I finally made it to a place of normalcy.  I wasn't angry all the time anymore, and when I did get angry it was reasonable.  I've been in balance for a long time now and thought that my problems with anger were behind me.  Until yesterday morning.

The actual argument isn't important.  I allowed myself to be engaged in negative conversation, I let my emotions get the best of me, and I reacted in a way that I am not proud of.  I only allowed myself to go back & forth with this individual twice before deciding to cut it off.  And even then he sent me hateful messages that I simply deleted.  So I did have some restraint - the old me would have gone on for much longer with much harsher commentary.  And had I decided to cut it off, I would have fought to the death!  But I didn't do that, I cut it off and then let it go right away.  Well, not right away.  I decided I needed to let it go right away and then I actually did let it go during my morning run.  The old me would have been steamed for hours later.

But I don't want to be that person anymore.  I don't want to allow anger to control me.  And the fact that it did, even if only for a few minutes, worries me.  The fact that I allowed myself to get sucked in to a negative conversation in the first place bothers me.  Why didn't I just let his comments go?  Why did I have to respond at all?  I was just sticking up for myself though, isn't that OK?

Of course it's OK.  But one thing I have learned is that anger & negativity begets more anger & negativity.  I had to know what I was getting into by responding at all.  I fed into it.  Why did I feed into it? And at what point does anger go from being an OK, healthy emotion to something that is not so healthy?

Swimming in Cloth

Believe it or not, two days ago was the first time I used a cloth diaper in the water!  When I started CD-ing my daughter, she was already 20 months old and it was the beginning of fall.  Shortly after she turned 2, we started the potty training process.  Also, shortly after she turned 2, my son was born and we didn't spend a lot of time in the pool/ocean that summer.  So last summer didn't lend itself to many opportunities to use a swim diaper at all. However, since we're just beginning this summer and R is far from potty training, I am sure the opportunities will be plentiful!

Cloth swim diapers from Mother Ease

I should start out by saying that I know they make cloth/reusable swim diapers, but I haven't purchased any.  Since I'm not sure if there will be a baby #3 or not, I'm not willing to invest the money in them since I know that regular cloth diapers can be used as well.  Really, we'd only be using it this summer and next summer (assuming that R is potty trained by age 3).

BumGenius AIO by CottonBabies

So the first time he went in the water, I used a BumGenius AIO and didn't use any additional inserts as I normally do.  Everything was fine, but I noticed that when I went to change the diaper his poor baby butt was wrinkly!  AIO's absorb too much for use in the water.  It wasn't the end of the world, and there was no risk of an exploding diaper as there are with regular disposables, but lesson learned, don't use AIO's in the water!

BumGenius 4.0 by CottonBabies

Day 2, I decided to use a BumGenius 4.0 with only the newborn insert.  I thought about using no insert at all, but I was a little skeptical since there would be absolutely nothing to absorb in case he were to pee outside of the pool.  This went better than the AIO, but he was still a little water-logged at the end of the day.  Again, nothing that some airing out can't fix, but I'd prefer not to let him get and stay so soaked.

SoftBums Omni

So next time I will give the 4.0's another try but without any insert or maybe a SoftBums without an insert.  I'll just have to use the same caution as with disposable swim diapers - put them on right before getting in the water & take them off shortly afterwords to avoid risk of leakage.  I was hoping to be able to avoid that with the cloth, but oh well.  Either way, I see no need to ever use a disposable swim diaper again!

What are your favorite cloth diapers to use as swim diapers?  Any suggestions?

Moms Against Moms

I have blogged before about how moms commiserating can be harmful, but it focused mainly on the negative headspace you can get stuck in by focusing on the bad parts of a situation instead of the positives, and it was mainly in regards to mom bloggers. But a few days back I came across a dialogue online that bothered me.  It happens all too frequently in real life and it kind of disgusts me.

To sum it up, there were two moms commiserating, and not in the healthy, supportive way. The good way sounds something like this:

Mom1: Ugh, last night was horrible! I barely got any sleep, the baby woke to eat 7 times last night, we tried co-sleeping but I couldn't get comfortable, and everyone was miserable!  So now I'm exhausted and hubby is away on business for 4 days so the rest of my week is going to be bad too!

Mom2: I hear you, those early days can be brutal but they'll be over before you know it. -- Or -- Our family co-slept for 5 years, maybe I can help you find a way to do it more comfortably?  --Or-- Would you like some help this week?

Healthy. Supportive. Helpful. Attempting to bring another mom up out of a dark place. However, this is not the dialogue that I was reading. What I saw were 2 women, who were both apparently moms, and were complaining about how difficult their lives were. Piles of laundry, seemingly absent spouses, general exhaustion, etc. But instead of trying to support each other or sympathize, it seemed more like they were trying to one-up each other with how hard their lives were. One would complain that it seemed like there was always a stack of dirty dishes and the other would come back with something like, "And you only have 1 kid! I have 3!!" As though having a bigger mess from 3 kids makes you a better mom or more of a mom somehow. Why the competition for who has it worse? Why would you be proud of the fact that your life is kinda miserable? I thought that the point of life was to enjoy it and to share that happiness with others, not bring them down further into darkness when they are clearly already struggling. Your life being worse or you having to deal with seemingly "more" than someone else does not negate the fact that the other person is also having a hard time. I came across this a lot when I was the mother of one. If I so much as mentioned I was having a difficult time at all, a barrage of people would say to me, "Wait until you have two!" or "You have it easy, you only have 1!". I just don't understand this. How are these comments at all helpful? They're not. They are bragging rights for the miserable. It's basically another way of saying to someone, "Your problems are insignificant. I have to deal with more. Shut-up."

But the part that really got to me, the part that was not only personally insulting to me but harmful to all of us, was at the end of the conversation.  The one mom had seemingly come to the end of her complaint list, and the other mom said something along the lines of, "Well, at least you get to stay home all day!  I do all of this AND have a full-time job!"  To me, this is her way of saying that because she works outside of the home, she does more or was a better mom because of it, hereby "out-mom-ing" her friend, if you will.  While simultaneously insinuating that if you are a stay at home parent you are at home all day, lounging about, taking it easy.  You know, bon bons and such.

The truth is that their situations are not similar enough to be compared like this at all!  If you have children and are working a full-time job, you're not doing exactly same things that a SAHM does.  Your life is different.  Yes, you share some similar responsibilities because you're both mothers, you both have to maintain some kind of living situation, but your day to day is very different.  The working parent's child is with someone else during the time that they are at work.  If it's a full-time job, that's a good portion of the day.  Yes, you might come home from a job and then do some of the things that parents who stay home do, like make dinner or wash dishes and things of that nature.  But it's not the same as being the at home parent.  It's just not.  I am in no way saying that you're any less of a parent or that your life is easier - working comes with its own set of challenges, and I will get to that.  What I'm saying is that it's silly to even try to compare the two situations and we shouldn't be.  One isn't better than the other.  One isn't more  or less of a mom.

But on top of that, the conversation that started this blog post also contributes to the invalidation of stay at home moms/dads.  In this society there is such a huge focus on a person's occupation that it has become synonymous with self & thereby self-worth.  The question 'What do you do?' might as well be 'Who are you & what are you worth?'.  I'm a doctor, I make a three figure salary, I'm really smart, you want to be me.  Or, I work for a non-profit agency, I don't make a lot of money but I'm really dedicated to this selfless cause that I love, I'm a great philanthropist and I do good things, you want to be me.

I'm not saying that this is right by any stretch of the imagination.  In fact, I think it's a big problem because if you tell the wrong person you're a SAHM...you might as well tell them that you're intentionally unemployed and homeless.  Useless.  Some people equate this with being uneducated or unrefined, or even as setting back the entire feminist movement 30+ years.  I know, it sounds ridiculous, but I have seen it with my own eyes and experienced some of these reactions first-hand. And the thing that these people aren't realizing is that deciding to be a stay at home parent, making that decision to leave a job and change your entire lifestyle is a HUGE decision!  And often times it's a tough adjustment that you didn't see coming.  And I'm not talking about the caring for a child stuff like changing diapers and learning how to function with a baby in the mix - ALL new parents go through that adjustment no matter what.  I'm talking about going from having a set daily routine where you had to wake-up & be somewhere at a specific time every day, seeing a group of your peers, having adult conversations and having some sort of purpose in a company somewhere every day, getting to be just YOU every day -- to functioning solely to provide for your child, identifying mainly as the parent of your child, having your biggest success of the day be eating more than just a bagel instead of landing some huge account or fixing some great customer service debacle.  When you make that change, it feels like you lose your identity for a little while.  You don't get the water cooler conversation anymore, you don't make employee of the month anymore, you don't get any raises or go on any cool business trips or undertake new projects.  This, coupled with the often-times underwhelming & slightly disappointed reaction from others to this new identity can make you feel completely irrelevant and lost.  It is quite belittling.  I mean, how would this conversation make you feel?  (And I've had it!):

Employed:  So, what do you do?
Mom:  I'm a mom.
Employed:  Yeah, but what do you DO?  You know, for work?
Mom:  I'm a stay at home mom.
Employed:  So you don't work?
Mom:  Not outside of the home for money, no.
Employed:  Oh. <pause> So what do you do all day?

*Sigh*  Staying at home with children IS a job.  It IS work.  It IS a skill.  It has its own set of challenges and on many days can be very hard.  I am not complaining about being a stay at home parent, nor am I saying that stay at home parents have it "worse" than those that work outside of the home.  What I am saying is that they are two completely different experiences and almost impossible to compare.  Again, we should not be comparing anything like this anyway, I don't think it's healthy to define anything as better or worse when it comes to life skills or lifestyles.  Both sides come with benefits as well as challenges and they suit different people differently.  Laura & I are both moms.  She has a fairly elevated position in the financial industry, I am primary caregiver at home to our children. Both of us have complaints about our roles & both of us have things we absolutely love about them.  Neither of us is a better mom or more of a parent.  Neither of us has it worse.  Our daily lives are just very different.

But because she is the working parent, Laura is seen as intelligent; There is a certain amount of prestige that comes with her job title.  People think she is capable, educated, hard-working.  Based solely on her job title.  But she is also a caring and nurturing mother.  She is playful and silly and fun.  Not what comes to mind when you hear she is a working parent.  People hear that I am a stay at home mom and they don't really think much beyond that.  They think I love children, am nurturing, and don't care too much about how intelligent I am or anything beyond that.  They don't see that I also have a college degree.  I like to write, to read books and learn.  They don't think of me as hard-working or prestigious.  They just see "MOM".

I'm sure that many parents that work full-time have had some backlash on the other side as well.  Plenty of my friends have gotten, "Well, who's raising this baby if you're BOTH at work all the time?  Spending nights and weekends with the kid isn't real parenting".  And I know that those who do work outside of the home are made to feel like less of a parent because of this and often times feel guilty because of their desire or financial necessity to maintain a full-time job.  Society gives none of us a break.  You're expected to stay at home, not work & raise your children, but when you do it's assumed that you are either uneducated or lazy.

But I am getting away from my point of posting this now.  I don't like when people try to claim that their life is harder and therefore they are entitled to something more.  Or to the opposite, they claim that because someone else's life seems more appealing it is somehow easier and that other person doesn't live up to whatever ridiculous expectation being set.  Specifically when it comes to parents.

If you are a parent with a full-time job, you get to be an adult amongst other adults for a good portion of the day.  You have some form of commute to work where you get to be in your own head for a while and can drink your coffee and listen to your music or radio show or sit in silence if you want.  You are guaranteed to get a state-mandated break at some point.  You get recognition for your achievements and incentives to strive for better.  But you miss a lot of milestones and dance recitals and cuddles.  You work a full day and then have to come home and help keep up with the house and take care of kids for a while.  You feel like you never get a break and the work never ends.  If you're a stay at home mom/dad, you are your own boss & you get to make the rules.  There is no dress code, no rule about when your lunch should be.  You can go to the beach on a weekday if you want and you don't have to call out.  But the scenery never changes, really.  You rarely get a moment inside your own head or have adult conversation.  There are no sick days or vacation days.  You feel like you never get a break and the work never ends.

Now did I miss something, or don't we all have something in common here?  Having a full-time job does not make you supermom any more than being a stay at home mom makes you insignificant. Trying to make women feel bad for either decision is damaging.  We need to stop trying to out-mom each other and support each other instead.  We all need to assume that we are all doing the best that we can every day.  We need to make the best out of whatever situation we are in and celebrate all of the good that we have.  Sometimes we really have to search for the light at the end of the tunnel, but I assure you, it's there.  And it's a lot easier to find when you have people around you who support you and who help you to find the good instead of tearing you down because you're not exactly like they are or juggling as much as them.

And so I ask you, are you "Mom Enough" to avoid these silly competitions for misery badges?  Are you "Mom Enough" to enjoy how wonderful your children are, no matter how much time you get the privilege of spending with them?  Are you "Mom Enough" to know that motherhood is not a competition and cannot be graded?  Are you "Mom Enough" to accept that not all moms are like you and that's OK, because we're all on our own paths? Are you "Mom Enough" to know that there's no way to know if you're "Mom Enough"?

Love your kids.  Love your life.  Stop comparing it to anything else because nothing is better than the life you already have.

Stop Shutting Out Our Children

I was at the doctor's office with my son the other day, and while I was sitting in the waiting room I witnessed something that has become all too commonplace in my opinion, and we all need to do something to change it.  If we don't, I don't know what kind of people we will have in the future.  I see it all the time and sadly, I have been guilty of it to a degree myself.  But for the first time I was overwhelmed by what I was witnessing and it made me extremely sad.

There are two sections to the waiting room in our doctor's office separated by a wall - an attempt to keep the sick patients separated from the well patients.  I was sitting on the one side with my back to the separating wall and I could hear the interactions between a mother & her child.  Until this point I had not seen either of them, and had no idea the age of the child or what was really happening.  Honestly, I wasn't paying much attention to them at all until I head the mother scream out, "Get over here right now or I'm going to beat your ass!"  Well, now they had my attention!

I could hear the distinct beeps of typing/texting on a cell phone.  A few squeals of joy from a child.  Some quick and small foot steps.  Laughter.  More texting.  Message beeps.  All broken up by, "Get OVER here!  Now!"  We've all been there at some point I'm sure - We're out in public & our child is behaving in a way that we wish they wouldn't.  I really tried to put myself in this mother's shoes before jumping to a judgement of her.  I remember when K was about 11 months old and had just started to learn to walk.  I went to one of my first Holistic Mom's meetings and there was a guest speaker giving a presentation about water.  K, having just learned to walk, wanted to run around the entire room and explore every crevice.  She writhed & wiggled to try to get down off my lap.  And when I did put her down, she was off!  Getting into everything that she "shouldn't" have.  Stacks of hand-outs about water.  Women's purses.  The giant bin of pretzels offered as a snack to attendees.  Me, being new to the group and the only person who actually brought a child to the meeting, had no idea what was appropriate for the situation. I certainly didn't want to be that parent, with the unruly child who ruined the meeting.  But I also didn't want to reprimand K or keep her from exploring her world, which had just expanded tenfold to her since she could now walk.  So I did what I thought appropriate for the situation - I stayed near her and when she grabbed things that I thought were off limits (keys from someone's purse), I took it out of her hands, gently said, "no", and moved her to another part of the room that was "safe" for her.

But my attention was on my daughter.  I shifted it from time to time to the guest speaker's words, but overall the point of his presentation was lost to me as I was making sure my child was safe and not disturbing anyone else to the point of annoyance.  And just as I was thinking of this night that happened over two years ago, a little girl comes waddling around the wall.  I make eye contact with her, smile, and say, "hi!".  She can't be more than 13 or 14 months old.  She lights up & screeches with glee!  She is so happy to just be there!  To be walking and seeing people and finding things.  She waddles towards the door, stumbles & falls as new walkers do.  But then she gets back up & claps her hands in delight and smiles.  She sees a bin of books and runs towards it.  Of course, stumbles & falls again and gets up with delight.  I'm offering her words of encouragement, things like, "Great job!", "Yay!  You got back up!", all the things I would say to my own kids when they start walking.  And then the girl's mother stomps around the wall.  She is young, easily 10 years my junior.  "Get over here, NOW!" she yells as she keeps her face tuned to her phone, fingers moving madly, never missing a beat.  "You LEAVE that baby ALONE!"  And with that, she picks up her daughter and gives her a smack on the bottom. 

I have several problems with this scene happening before me, but I am trying to relate to this woman and give her the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe she is concerned that her daughter is bothering me.  Maybe she doesn't want her child near my child because mine could be contagious and she doesn't want her daughter getting sick.  And I should mention that at this point we are the only people in the entire waiting area.  So I say to this mother, "Don't worry about us, she's not bothering us at all!  She's adorable!"  And I proceed to try to make small-talk, trying to talk this mom down from wherever her rage is coming from.  Maybe she's just upset because her daughter isn't listening to her.  Maybe she's been at it all day & the repetition is getting old & wearing on her last nerve - I get that.  We've all been there!

But this mother never looked up from whatever was happening on her phone.  She had this wonderful daughter, this beam of light who was so happy, who was learning right in front of us, and she was missing it.  And she was angry.  And she was shutting out her own daughter.  Why?  Because she had to text someone?  She had to update a Facebook status?  It killed me that when the nurse came to call them back into the room, this mother never acknowledged the nurse at all and remained focused on her phone, never looking up.  To me, that's just rude.  And many of us are doing this.  With all of the technology that exists now, we feel the need to "stay connected" and consume whatever is thrown at us.  Mothers are choosing status updates over watching their children learn.  Fathers are watching videos instead of what is right in front of them.  And the result is that we are actually LESS connected to what is happening in our own day to day lives.  We want to stay up to date on everything that everyone else is doing, but we are losing sight of our own world, of what is REAL.  We are distracted from everything because we want to miss nothing.

We are all guilty of this to an extent, myself included.  And in this day & age it would be almost impossible to avoid technology completely.  Sometimes we have to take phone calls, we have to answer a text, we have to go online for something.  It's unavoidable.  And if your kids are like mine, the second I put the phone to my ear is when they become the most needy.  Sometimes we have no choice - we have to pay the bills and call customer service, and wait on hold indefinitely, and a whining child in the background can make you want to scream.  And sometimes we do.  Sometimes we have to shut out our children so that we can keep our lives moving forward.  We tell our children to hold on for a minute while we make a phone call.  We say we'll do something later, just as soon as I finish filling out this form.  But we have to find a balance.  Otherwise we'll all be rude zombies walking around, eyes glued to a small screen and not even taking note of the people surrounding us.  What to you have to tend to right now and what do you want to focus on?  For people with children, especially the young ones, your answer should be your children.  Yes, there are times that our focus needs to be directed elsewhere, but every time we shut them out we are telling them that they are not important.  Every time we don't include them in what we are doing we are sending the message that they do not matter.

I came across a quote yesterday & it made me think about this mother in the doctor's office: 

"Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what.  If you don't listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won't tell you the big stuff when they are big.  Because to them, all of it has always been big stuff." ~Catherine M. Wallace

In the end it's the relationship with your children that matters most, not the Tweets or latest viral video.  I assure you, life goes on if you do not answer every single text you receive.  Take steps to ensure that your child knows that he or she is the most important thing in your life.  A few months ago we implemented the rule that there is to be no non-essential internet usage while the children are awake, unless the other adult is there to tend to the children.  Yes, we can look up directions or weather or things like that if we have to because there are things we need to know on a daily basis.  But Facebook?  Blogging?  Right now Laura is lying on the couch covered in children so that I can post this blog.  If she wasn't, it would sit here as a draft until the children are napping or asleep for the night.

They are only small for a short time.  Make sure you are invested & present in every moment that you are with them.  Make it matter.  They will remember it.

Detergent Attempt One

After months and months of agonizing research & acquiring all of the necessary components, I have FINALLY made my first batch of diaper detergent! Born out of a bad customer service experience, Conneuter's Soap is underway!

The toughest part was the research. I really had to dig to see what was going to be safe for cloth diapers, what wasn't, and what is eco-friendly. Many of the "diaper-safe" detergent recipes out there claim that both Borax & soap are OK for cloth diapers, but the reality is that they are not. Any kind of soap - even natural soap - contains oils that will clog your cloth fibers and will lead to build-up & potential leaks/stink problems. And Borax is too harsh of a chemical to be using on something that you will put on your baby's bum, and it will also cause your elastic & PUL to wear out more quickly than with detergents that don't contain Borax. Plus, even though it has been tried & true for years, there are emerging concerns about the safety of the chemical, both to us & the environment.

So I read. And read. And read, and read, and read. I read the labels of any detergent that I could get my hands on. I looked up all of the ingredients to see what they were & what they were used for. I read to see their impact on the environment. I read about how they were processed. I read about how they break down. I read about pH. I read about how they interacted with other ingredients in detergents. And finally I came up with a list of what would make a safe & natural detergent for my cloth diapers. And I bought all of them.

And slowly, I acquired all of the other pieces of equipment I would need to create a batch - a food processor, measuring spoons, scents (which was a whole research project in itself!)....while I already had most of these items in my house, I couldn't bear the thought of using them to mix detergent & then put my food in them afterwords. And I needed the funds to purchase all of these items, whereupon lies the next major delay. And of course, since I can't ever do just ONE thing, during this process I came across ways to make natural hand soap & decided that I would take that on as well and make Conneuter's Soap all-encompassing.

But, alas, I bought my items, I found the time, and tonight, I created the first ever batch of Conneuter's Soap Cloth Diaper Wash. I selected the "Baby Fresh" scent, and while it is very pleasant, I can honestly say that it reminds me of a baby in no way. So I will be calling that something else when we are done.

My diapers are in the washer right now, so all we have to do is wait & see the final result. I opened the washer in-between cycles to take a whiff, and I can say preliminarily that I think I need to add more fragrance. Like I've said in previous posts, I want a detergent that will leave a nice, fresh scent behind, and I'm not sure that I achieved that this round. But that's what trials are for, right?

**If you are a cloth diapering mama (or dad!) and want to help in the trial phase, please let me know!**
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**UPDATE**
OK, so I definitely need to adjust my formula. For the first time since I have started cloth diapering, the diapers came out of the wash with stains still on them. Definitely not clean enough. Ugh. So I ran them through with RNG & am happy to say that any yuckiness is now gone. Back to the drawing board! Will make a few adjustments & substitutions & see what happens!

All About Cloth Diapers - My Favorite Things Giveaway

Just wanted to take a sec to tell you to check out this wonderful site: All About Cloth Diapers. It is a great resource for anyone who is currently using or even just thinking about cloth diapering. It has been a great help to myself in the past year and a half-ish that I have been CD-ing. It is run by a WAHM, and right now she is hosting a 12 Day Giveaway of her favorite things. Check her out on Facebook too!

Doh! Next Time Read Carefully

By now you have all read about my struggles with ammonia and HE washers, as well as my quest for the perfect cloth diaper detergent, inspiring me to try my hand at making my own. In the meantime, I needed to find something to use in lieu of the Clean B. We've all tried Rockin' Green, and I still had some of that left, but I wanted to see if I could find something that left behind a scent. So I bought some Ruby Moon.

At first I was neither pleased nor displeased with it. I found it to be as effective as the Rockin' Green but also without leaving behind any kind of fragrance. Ever solidifying my decision to make my own detergent, I continued to use the Ruby Moon in the interim while I continued to research the detergent making process. But as time went on, I noticed that my diapers started to have that horrible ammonia smell again, and my poor baby boy started getting horrible ammonia burns :( I had mostly kept the ammonia at bay with the Clean B and the Rockin Green, so I assumed the problem was the Ruby Moon as that was what has changed about my wash routine.

Then, when I read the packaging more clearly, I realized that I had made a horrible mistake! Instead of buying the Ruby Moon Diaper Wash, I bought the Ruby Moon Laundry Detergent! BIG difference! So after realizing this, I decided to strip my diapers in hopes that this would rid them of the stink. Well, it's been 9 hours and I'm still trying to rinse suds out of them! Hmmph!

So when purchasing new detergent, make sure you're reading the details very carefully or else you might end up in a similar situation! Has anyone else's mommy brain done something similar lately? I always love a good phone in the fridge story....not that I've done anything like that...

Poor Customer Service = Possible Business Venture For Me?

A while back I wrote a rave review about Clean B Detergent. I still feel it is the best detergent for cloth diapers out there, however there have been many issues with this company and shipping. I don't want to get into all of the details here, or bash another working mom, but suffice it to say that she has many, many unfulfilled orders, including mine.

That being said, obviously this detergent is no longer an option for me. I have tried several others out there...Rockin' Green, Charlie's Soap, Ruby Moon, Seventh Generation...you get the picture. RNG & Ruby Moon are decent brands, and the diapers do come out of the wash very clean and unstinky, but nothing leaves behind a nice, fresh scent quite like Clean B does.

So I did a little research, and as it turns out making your own detergent is not very difficult! There are some standard ingredients that you need to avoid for use with cloth diapers, and I'll have to play with the amount of fragrance I put into it, but I think I'm going to give it a shot! If it works out well, I may consider selling it - there is definitely a market for cloth diaper detergents! We'll see what happens when I get all of my ingredients together and start experimenting :)

Catch It With Cloth

Everyone who has kids in diapers knows about the dreaded poop explosions. This is when that wonderful breastfed baby poop seems to go everywhere but inside the diaper. It happened constantly with my daughter, K, when she was an infant, and it's one of the reasons I wanted to give cloth a try. I had heard good things about a cloth diaper's ability to keep the mess in place, but we didn't start using cloth until K was over a year old. So when my son, R, was born I was anxious to see how the cloth diapers compared to the disposables.

For the first few months we were absolutely fine. No leakage from either the disposables or the cloth (we still use disposables at night or if we are going on an overnight trip). Then about 2 weeks ago we had our first spillage incident. It was with a disposable diaper. We continued to have leakage with the disposables, yet absolutely no problems with the cloth.
I think that it has to do with the material of the diapers themselves. With the disposables, I noticed that when I would go to change R if there was a large quantity, it would still be sloshing around in the diaper when I opened it - even after allowing a few minutes to settle. In some cases, this actually led to a mess all over the changing table even if there was no actual diaper leak. The second I laid him down it would spill out the top back of the diaper. However, with the cloth diapers, even if I change him directly after the explosion, everything has already been absorbed into the diaper! No leaks out the top, no leaks at all!
Like I said, it's only been about 2 weeks that the leaks have been happening at all, so I realize that anything can still happen. But for comparison, just about every poop in a disposable lately has lead to some sort of mess outside of the diaper. We have had no such incident with the cloth. So for those of you still on the fence about switching to cloth, here's yet another reasn to do it!

Special Mommy Time

A while back I blogged about my trepidation on having some "Alone Time". Going back & re-reading it, having been a mother of two for the past 5 months, I am very glad that I decided then to spend the night at home with my daughter. She was asleep when I got home, but I was there when she woke up.

I have since spent 1 single night away from her - the night my son, R, was born. Those days of napping with her are gone. Those days of giving her 100% of my attention to only her are fleeting. Our relationship has changed a bit since the arrival of my son, and I am so happy that I had the foresight to cherish those last few months/weeks/days alone with her.

That being said, now that there are two of them it is even harder to find a moment to myself to just be in my own head for a while. I put one child down, the other one needs me for something else. I get one to sleep and the other wakes up. I set K up to eat and R decides he needs to nurse right then. As constant as motherhood was with one child is has intensified drastically with two, and I found myself starting to come apart a bit at the edges. My need for a break was greater than it was before and I wasn't liking the person I was becoming. I was jealous of people who got to do all of these things outside of their families, like play in a band or go back to school or take a yoga class. I found myself getting bitter with Laura because she got to go to the gym at least once a week. Heck, I was aching to have the hour long commute she so often complained about; a full hour by myself in the car where I could listen to whatever music I wanted to, as loud or as soft as I wanted to. I could open up all of the windows if I wanted to without fear of who's too hot or too cold. I wouldn't have to worry if the wind was too much on someone else. Or I could sit in complete silence if I wanted to. Sounds like a treat to me, what is she complaining about??!!

I had this feeling of "stuck", like I was always waiting for my break in the day to come and it never did. In the morning I was overlooked in our routine, hoping to have 5 minutes to wash my hair without rushing because someone is crying for me. A chance to take clothes out of my closet & put them on my body before someone comes along and spills rice milk on it. Or do something as simple as wash the dishes in less than 5 and a half hours. Eat? What does that mean? So many days go by where I'm not putting anything in my mouth until dinnertime or when I feel like I'm going to pass out. I felt trapped, always waiting for the next part of the day to come because it always promised a break for myself. A break that never came.

I just have to get the kids dressed & fed. Then I can take a shower & get dressed. But then I realize that nobody did the dishes last night & now I can't function in our kitchen. So I feed the kids & then do the dishes so that lunch will be easier. Then diapers have to be changed & potty must be gone to. Just get through (fill in the blank task). Then you can make yourself a cup of coffee. But then laundry, and who spilled something, and somebody inevitably poops on something they shouldn't have so everything must stop so we can deal with that.

You get the idea.

And while we did make some much needed changes to our schedules & morning routines, somehow I always got left out of things. If we were running late it was me who got less time because I didn't have a job to be at at a specific time. Laura had her set night that she went to the gym because it was important to her. Other nights she has to work late or has a business dinner or is gone to another state for a week. Don't misinterpret - I was a part of the schedule making as well. I told Laura that if she needed gym time that it would be done. It was me who wasn't pushing for the me time for myself. I thought it would be fine. I thought I could do without it. But I felt the need for it creeping in. And it bothered me the more I didn't get it.

So I thought about what it was that I wanted. It took me a while to figure it out & I considered pretty much all of my options. I didn't want to go back to work. R was still waaaayyy to young for that and I wasn't ready. As I mentioned in the other blog, it stresses me out to be away from my babies for too long while they are still nursing. I spend all of my "me time" worrying about how they're doing and if I need to be pumping, etc. and it just becomes more of a headache than it's worth. So I knew I couldn't do something too far away or that would take too much time either.

Then I found it. It literally appeared to me in the mail one day. An ASL course. It's one hour a week, 20 minutes away. I was of course worried about being able to afford it but we decided that it would be worth it, and let me tell you it is 100% worth it! On the way home the first night I was so happy I was in tears. I had my alone time in the car. I sang at the top of my lungs with the windows down & the sunroof open. (Yes, I am a crazy person). I had the class itself, which is something I've wanted to do for years & years now, and something I've been a little intimidated by to be honest. Being out of the game for so long has kind of made me question some of my abilities as of late. But the teacher is deaf and she does not speak at all, so we are forced to learn how to communicate with her. The fact that I have figured it out gave me a confidence boost.

Everything about this special mommy time is perfect. It is a set time for me - Laura knows not to plan work stuff on the nights I have class. She has some time where she is alone with 2 kids and gets a taste of what I do all day long. It's a long enough break for me so that it is, in fact, a break. But it's not so long that I start to worry about R. By the time I get home, he's gearing up for bed anyway so it couldn't time out any better. I have time to be my own person, to learn something that I want to learn. To interact with people as me, as Bel - not K & R's mommy or Laura's wife. I am relevant as me. I am able to prove to myself that I can still pick up a new skill and that whatever doubts I was starting to have in myself for being home for so long are unnecessary and unfounded. I'm still smart. I'm still able. I'll be able to transition out of this part of my life when the time is appropriate.

This really does give me the boost in my life that I was lacking. It resets me and my mind and my mood and lets me shine. When this class ends I will do something else and I will make sure that I never lose touch with myself again because I don't like the person I become when I fade into the background of my own life.

What do you do in your life to keep you going? What is your special mommy time?