Dry all night!

October 18th, 2010

When we got up this morning, she was nursing as usual but I eventually ran off because I had to go to the bathroom. She ran after me telling me she had to go. Sometimes this is just reporting what I'm doing but I pealed off her pjs and plopped her on the potty. She eagerly peed and had clearly been holding it. Her diaper was completely dry.

I think this probably happens often and I'm just too lazy to leap up and drag her off to the bathroom first thing in the morning. If she asks, of course I'll take her, but otherwise, I'd rather lie in bed for a few minutes and nurse and maybe we'll even doze again. I've read that kids don't pee in their sleep. They wake up first. (I've also read that it takes a while for that hormone to develop, but I guess it has.) There have been times when I'm sure it's just fresh pee when I get up in the morning. I guess I should get in the habit of getting up more quickly.

More surprises in pottying

October 17th, 2010

A couple of days ago, my daughter headed off for the bathroom. As she got there, she exclaimed "Stool!" and ran away (actually, she said, "Sewell" but was referring to the stool she uses to get up onto the toilet). She found the stool which weighs about half as much as she does and carried it back to the bathroom. Then she pulled off her diaper, put it in the diaper bucket, sat on the toilet and promptly peed and pooped.

Then yesterday, we drove to a wedding about an hour away and then to the reception following. After a while, my husband asked me when I'd last changed her. My sheepish response? "When we were at home." In other words, several hours ago. No one had checked her in the meantime. He handed her to me to go change her and was concerned she'd filled the diaper and leaked. But then someone came to chat or her grandparents wanted to play with her or something and I completely forgot that I was en route to changing her potentially leaky diaper.

A while later, my husband confirmed I'd changed her. Oops, no. So I whisked her off to the bathroom feeling like the most negligent parent ever and hoping the leaking wouldn't be too bad.

I was shocked when I removed her diaper. It was dry. Completely bone dry. 6.5 hours, including a nap, wedding, 2 car trips, dinner and some reception time later and she stayed completely dry. I popped her on the toilet in the busy restaurant bathroom (she hates those stall bathrooms with all the scary noises and limited visibility) and she immediately peed. It didn't seem like she'd been anxiously waiting for hours, but she was content enough to go given the opportunity. I put her in a new diaper (saving the other dry one for use later, but I wanted confirmation that it was in fact dry and I wasn't just crazy) and when we got home 3 hours later, that new diaper was dry too.

It's fun to change dry diapers.

observations of prefolds, poop, and traveling

October 17th, 2010

I have a very good friend who is using a diaper service. This way, she can put her kid in cloth diapers and someone else does the laundry. Now, I've stated before that I personally don't like prefolds so this option wouldn't be for us, but it's a reasonable option for many. Traveling with them seems particularly difficult though.

I don't get to see this friend often but email frequently and talk periodically so we're pretty up to date on each other's day to day lives. Recently, she's mentioned a lot of poop leakage with her diapers. It seems like an almost daily occurrence. (A couple of weeks ago, she marveled that she'd never experienced a blow out like she'd heard people talk about. So this is a new occurrence.) Anyway, it's usually the diaper, cover, clothes and whatever the kid was sitting on at the time... usually something like a blanket, couch, car seat, etc. Often, she puts an extra diaper under him when putting him down (and he's 3 mo old so not yet mobile) so that helps too. It just seems like daily that she has to do extra clean up-- which seems to defeat the purpose of a diaper service. (But she's still happy so it's working for them just fine.)

I got to witness one of these diaper blow outs and help with clean up. (Really, I don't mind poop and it was nice to get a few minutes alone with my friend in the middle of an otherwise large event with lots of people. I just wish I could have been more helpful than just making sure he didn't roll off the changing table and didn't put his hands in poop. Those are important things though, I guess.) Anyway, poop was all over the prefold, in the snappi, surrounding the cover, and a little on his clothes and it'd soaked through to the car seat where he'd been sitting. (Just a little moisture on the carseat, fortunately, since there was little they could do about it while on a trip and in the middle of an event.) Anyway, we got the kid cleaned up and in a new outfit in minimal time. It was still a lot of time though.

But I got to thinking... wow, this was a lot harder than with a disposable. If I always had a buddy to help, it'd be fine, but there's no way I could guarantee that. Otherwise, I'm not sure I'd have the positive attitude and perseverance my friend had to keep up with cloth diapering on a trip like she did and deal with frequent monster poops.

More thoughts:

• Pre-planning: She had to coordinate with the diaper service to swap out diapers just before leaving or she'd have run out of clean ones.
• Packing: She had to pack more than enough diapers to be sure they'd be set. With disposables, I'd pack a few more than I thought I'd need, I'd be able to run to a store to buy more if my daughter suddenly came down with diarrhea or something.
• Changing: When changing a disposable on the go, I'd yoink one off and strap on the other in roughly the same motion, pausing briefly to wipe. then it all goes into the trash. With the cloth, we had to find a diaper, cover and a bag to put it in. This was a messy one so we needed clothes and another bag for the messy ones, but that's about the same as a disposible if it'd leaked. Anyway, remove clothes, remove cover, take off and clean snappi, remove diaper, bag things, wipe, put on clean diaper, replace snappi, replace cover, reclothe, store dirty clothes/diapers and trash wipes. Now, to be fair, disposables would really be: remove clothes, bag, remove dirty diaper, wipe, rediaper, reclothe, store soiled clothes, trash dipe/wipes. That seems like 13 steps vs 8. Now, my friend is happy to do it so it must work fine, but it seems like a lot to me.
• Supplies: She normally has diapers for up to a week and covers for 1.5 days. (As far as I know.) The covers get thrown into normal washes about every day or so. So this posed a little challenge for a 4 day trip with no machine access. Even with a swap of dirties for cleans just before leaving, there was still a limiting factor of covers. Perhaps they bought more, I'm not sure, but it still seemed like some ingenuity needed to be done with cover usage and they used covers they'd have normally washed more thoroughly before using again. This seemed to work fine, but perhaps tripling their cover stash would have been good. Seems like a lot of expense for a 4 day trip though. They certainly made it work, I'm just not sure I'd want to do it. Traveling is hard enough!
• Traveling home. They had to cart home all their poopy/wet diapers. Ew! But they came up with a clever fix. They put diapers into ziploc bags. (They'd intended to use wet bags but forgot to get them before leaving.) When they get home, they'll have to empty all the ziplocs into their laundry or the diaper service bag but it sure beats smelling 4 day old poop all the way home.

I have to wonder though-- people who are flying places for a week or so... is an entire suitcase dedicated to diapers? Given that many airlines charge for bags, that has got to be costly. Babies already require a ton of stuff. I've got to admire anyone's dedication to cloth diapering who can pull that off!

PT

October 10th, 2010

I haven't put her in undies much at all lately. (Maybe once or twice in the last week?) However, we're still seeing little potty training progress.

She seems to tell us when she has to go, or maybe when she's going, even in diapers. The conversation is usually something like this:
"Potty." Nearly inaudibly and it usually takes my brain a second to process it.
"Did you say 'potty'? Do you need to go potty? Well, lets go!"
"No." Now she's done and no longer needs to go. At least her diaper gets changed quickly and she's telling me when she needs to go, but I'm apparently taking too long to react. Still progress, I think.

Also, her diapers are dry longer so I am changing her less often, which meant we went through fewer diapers and I forgot to do the laundry because our little tiny trash can wasn't yet full. Typically, our nighttime diapers are a bumgenious all-in-one with 2 additional hemp inserts. We use the flip organic prefold if we run out of hemp inserts. That's 4 days worth and I typically do diaper laundry every other day so that should be "plenty." However, with only about 8 diapers in the pail, I didn't realize I needed to do laundry and ended up stuffing her diaper last night with a prefold and a pair of socks.

She's been in underwear most of today. I figured we had about an hour this morning before we left the house so she was in undies which stayed dry. She peed before we left, but I put her in a diaper for our 1.5 hour walk in the stroller. (I wasn't willing to risk it. There aren't easily accessible toilets the whole walk and I'm not going to carry a potty or just have her pee in the grass, which have both been suggestions I've heard.) Anyway, when we got home, her diaper was dry and she went pee/poop in the potty and then got undies on. She's been dry through her nap (so far) and it's 5pm.

I do like having NO used diapers at all so far today. :)

Trainers

October 10th, 2010

I won $10 to an online diaper store. Whoo hoo! :)

I think my typical response to this kind of thing would be to see what I could get for free. However, now I'm looking at what things I'd probably like but wouldn't justify the money without even being able to see the product, but maybe $10 would be worth the risk.

One of the products I'm considering is Trainers.

I'm not sure I really understand Trainers/Training Pants. Are they just diapers that can be pulled on and off? Are they supposed to feel wet (unlike many diapers)? Do they contain messes? Do they change color or play a sound when wet? (I haven't found any that do, but that'd be neat!)

After looking at quite a few and reading reviews, it seems like there are 2 kinds:
* Not waterproof at all but a little bit absorbent. The Gerber Training Pants that we have that are just like regular underwear but have the padding of about 6 cotton balls in the crotch. It seems like these are most useful when a kid starts peeing, feels the wetness, and stops. If they were to keep peeing, the pee would go right through. These will hold a little more than a typical pair of cotton undies so could save the carpet if there was only a little dribble before the kiddo remembered what to do.
* Semi-waterproof. I think the idea here is that the child pees and it's contained mostly. Maybe I need some of these for when I think she is potty trained but it'd be bad news if she isn't... like when she's bouncing on the trampoline during gymnastics class.

Is this it?

Potty Training Update

October 6th, 2010

We're continuing to lazily potty train. For some period of time each day, on some days in the last 1.5 weeks, my 20 month old has been in underwear with a cover, usually the plastic pants.

Some points that are worth noting (for me, anyway :)

• She doesn't pee nearly as often as I thought she would. I figured toddlers peed every 20 minutes. It seems to be more like every couple of hours. I was worried she was dehydrated, but output seems to be quite good. She's overfilled diapers twice in the last week when she'd been in them less than 20 minutes.
• No leaks at all in the plastic pants. I'm using 12 mo old size on our 23+ lb 20 month old over little 2T/3T cotton undies. I sometimes wonder if we could have gone smaller because these are so baggy, but I think the bagginess is what lets her know she has gone if she fails to notice she feels wet. Then there's a bag of pee hanging on to her and she'll respond to that immediately.
• I tried putting her in the thicker trainer undies and an empty pocket diaper. She wasn't aware she'd gone. Too much like a diaper and too absorbent, I guess. I don't think warm moisture is very uncomfortable
• Has successfully done at least one nap time in undies and stayed dry.
• One trip out of the house (day 3) in the stroller in undies (with a fleece cover and extra prefolds on the seat) and she stayed dry. Haven't risked it otherwise.
• One day 7, she was standing in the shower (waiting for me to join her) and she told me she needed to go potty a couple of times before peeing. That means she knows ahead of time! Only moments before, but that's a good sign.
• The messiest incident was when she told me she needed to go potty but she's started by the time we got there and I mostly got peed on taking the plastic pants off. Maybe she told me ahead of time, but not by much. It was just a little pee on my hands and the bathroom floor (and the undies and plastic pants) though, so not too bad for messiest incident.
• The last two nights (roughly days 11 and 12), she has been very insistent about needing to go right after we put a night time diaper on her (extra absorbency) but the diaper was wet by the time we got it off her. Good to have more back up night diapers ready. I don't plan to try nights in undies for quite some time both because I'm not sure she's ready (nor am I for getting up all night) and because the plastic pants don't breathe at all so if she's in them during the day, I'd like her to be in something a little more breathable at night. Of course, PUL covers aren't breathable either, but at least the diapers we use have a stay dry liner. I just want to let her skin be dry some of the time.
• She's taken herself to the potty several times when she had to go, stayed dry and hopped up on the toilet (she's using a stool) and went successfully all on her own. I'm still there for clean up and preventing the entire roll of toilet paper from going down the toilet but she's getting to be pretty self-sufficient.

I could put more effort into it and make sure she gets underwear time daily or that I take her more often, but the lazy method seems to be working and not taking more energy than diaper changes. Plus, I know she gets changed immediately so I don't have to worry that she's been in a wet diaper for hours if we go a while between changes. So far, so good.

Amazon Mom

October 5th, 2010

I don't know how Amazon does it. I just ordered diapers again for 30% off and free delivery. That means I got a giant pack of Pampers Swaddlers Sensitive, 132 diapers for $28, including free 2-day shipping. That's 22 cents each for premium toddler-sized diapers. Signed up for delivery again in a few months but I'll just cancel it if we don't need it then. Amazon mom is the best deal on disposable diapers right now.

Nighttime Dryness

October 24th, 2010

We've achieve nighttime dryness! 3rd day in a row, 4th this week. I didn't even rush her out of bed this morning. First she woke me up and nursed. We talked about going to potty and she agreed. I got up and she got out of bed on her own. I went potty first and undressed her and she messed with the stool while she was naked for a minute. Then she climbed up and went potty. No problem. It's like she'd been doing it all her life. I hope it lasts! :)