sunday, sunday...

...just another lazy Sunday here in the little apartment. I like to rest on Sundays. Just let the whole week's worth of troubles and chaos slip away as I catch up on some of my blogs that I read! :) Today I read a great post about breastfeeding over at She Breathes Deeply. Mandy is a great, young, Christian momma (just like myself) and I love to read her blog. She has a daughter as well, Lily, who is 10 months old. Anyway, she wrote a post about breastfeeding and all the trouble she had in the beginning and now it's going wonderfully. It really parallels some of the struggles Meghan and I had in the beginning. I was just so unsure of everything and sometimes it felt like giving up would be easiest, but I am so glad we stuck with it. Meg is still a happy nurser at almost 18 months old. :)

Do you ever have to go back read your recent blog posts to make sure you're not repeating repeating yourself? Haha. I just did. I wanted to elaborate on the cloth diaper adventure and I couldn't remember if I had written some things. I hadn't, so now I'm sharing them.

So, I had said Meghan was battling a rash. What I didn't say was that we've been fighting with the rash on and off for at least the last 6 months. :( Side note about our washing routine- I was rinsing every diaper, using 2 scoops of Rockin Green diaper soap (as recommended) in just 1 wash cycle, then line drying.

At first, it was just regular type rashes that would clear right up. Then in August the rash turned into abscesses seemingly overnight. I took Meghan into the Dr where she was prescribed some antibiotics and I was told to use triple antibiotic cream as well. (1st warning sign) It cleared up well and then made a mini appearance right before our family camping trip in September. I was worried about being in the wilderness and her rash getting out of control again, so I called the Dr again. They didn't want to put her on antibiotics again so soon, to avoid her developing an immunity to the medication. I was told to use the Neosporin. I had some bacitracin, so we used that and disposables while camping. Bad. Idea. The abscesses were minuscule, but the red, angry rash flared up like crazy. (2nd warning sign) She was in pain and it hurt me to have to change her diaper.

Since then the rash has been pretty constant. And I am kicking myself for not realizing what it was before now. We could get the rash to go away, but it would almost always start up soon after. (3rd warning sign) I started using coconut oil as a diaper rash cream and it did help more than anything else, but the rash never really went away. It had progressed from a red, angry, raised rash into that plus blisters. :( I was literally crying over it and I wanted so badly to not let it hurt Meghan. I thought I just needed to strip the diapers more. I tried drops of Dawn dish soap in the wash and stripping them by boiling them on the stove. But, again, these were only temporary fixes. Her bum hasn't been completely clear since before August.

Then I saw a blog post from some diaper company or cloth diaper blog about yeast. A light bulb went off and suddenly, everything made sense. CLICK! (hah) It made total sense. The rash that never truly went away, blisters, antibiotics and the fact that I only ran 1 wash cycle. I don't know how many times I've read about extra rinses when washing cloth diapers, but I was/am trying to save money and thought I could cut corners. Turns out I can't.

First thing I did was bleach everything. This is a big no-no in the cloth diaper community because bleach can break down the fibers very fast and ruin the diapers. I always thought I would never bleach and then I realized since I have been drying the diapers inside because of the weather, they weren't getting bleached by the sun! It was like everything aligned at once! So, I bleached every diaper, wipe and cover in our "stash" and washed them a 2nd time with NO SOAP. Then I dried the 100% cotton wipes, prefolds, and fitteds the dryer and everything else (anything with PUL in it) on the drying rack so it wouldn't melt. I noticed an improvement almost immediately. We went through the rest of our disposables that we had leftover from the camping diaper disaster and switched entirely to the bleached cloth and coconut oil (which is safe for cloth diapers because of it's super low melting point).

Her beautiful booty is getting clearer and clearer everyday. No more red, just a few spots of pink skin and the bigger blisters are almost healed. I am beyond happy that I finally figured it out! I am still kicking myself that it took so long for me to get it. I was almost to the point of quitting the cloth. I was hoping Meg would take to potty learning as she showed some interest and then we would only have to deal with diapers at nap time and overnight. But, she's not really interested in the potty. She has peed on it a few times, but that's it. It was really hard to look at her cute, bare bum during the day covered in an angry rash, but it's looking good now!

On to other things...we are still ttc. I got AF again this month, but I had started charting my temperature orally on fertilityfriend.com. I really think we can conceive if I know what is going on with my body. And I started charting, not just to ttc. I have been interested in temping for awhile and I'm pretty "crunchy" and I want to be in tune with my body. Speaking of, I had the strangest dream last night. I was VBACing in a hospital (hah) and Meg's pediatrician was my OB but he was fatter (very strange) and some girls I knew in high school were my L&D nurses. I dreamt that I stopped labor and made all the drs and nurses look at me and listen to my "demands" for the birth, like holding the baby right away, nursing right away, leaving the cord attached until all the blood was in the baby, etc. I did have 2 IV's, 1 in each arm, which was weird. Drew wasn't there though, I was all by myself with the hospital staff. We had a boy, but I don't know the name.

Weird.

My diet and exercising is going pretty good. I've lost 3.3 pounds according to the Wii! I don't know how accurate it is, but it's too small for me to notice a difference yet. Which is ok with me. The WiiFit makes you weigh yourself everyday, which I don't think is effective as far as mentally trying to lose weight, but it's how you "check in" each day, so if you just exercise, it doesn't record that you did anything that day. Not effective. I would say dieting is only going fair. It is really hard for me to not snack throughout the day especially when Dylan and Meghan are both here, because someone is always hungry! We got some super delicious grapefruit at BJ's last weekend so I've been enjoying those at breakfast almost every day ;) I also tried oatmeal with peanut butter and blueberries for the first time and it was strangely good. It's hard to not put sugar and milk on it! I had tried a while ago with just crunchy peanut butter and I didn't like it. But with creamy peanut butter and some frozen blueberries...yum!

My confession today is that I didn't exercise yesterday or today at all, so I'm off to shovel the car out of all the snow we've gotten in the last couple days!