the best baby wipes ever

A couple years ago I learned about making my own baby wipes via pinterest. Now I have a recipe I like even better.

Homemade wipes don't take long to make, and they have only good ingredients. There is no alcohol of any kind, so they don't dry out your baby's bum. I'm sure they are cheaper than store-bought wipes, but I haven't done the math yet as to how much. And quite frankly, they work better: especially with newborn poop, paper towels really picks it up more easily!

I got a new recipe from doTERRA's blog. I like it better than my first homemade one because these ingredients are completely natural, and lavender's healing properties prevent diaper rash.

What you need:  paper towel roll, a plastic container, 2 tablespoons fractionated coconut oil, lavender essential oil, 2 cups pre-boiled water, & a serrated knife.

Any paper towels will do, but I like using the paper towel rolls that have the half-sized sheets. That's about all you need sometimes anyway. The pictured plastic container was a great find. I happened upon it in a mom-n-pop kitchen store in Cambridge. I think this link is the same thing. It's expensive, but think of it as an investment. It does the job so well and I can re-use it if I stopped making wipes. It's great because the flip top can be opened with one hand (so I have the other to hold Mikayla's toes up and out of her poop). It seals tightly, and fits a half-paper towel roll nearly perfectly. It's a bit snug, but it all works out for the best. [If you want to spend little or no money on a container, check out my new discovery for a container at the end of the post!]

The steps: 
First remove the core from the paper towel roll. If you pinch it and twist it, it comes out easily.

Then cut the paper towel roll in half. My dad suggested I borrow his band saw, and it certainly would be easier. But as few of us have access to one, a serrated knife does the trick. 

 See how much fun I'm having with this? 

Since my roll is a bit too fat for my plastic container, I take off a few layers until it fits. I fold them accordion style...more on those bits later.

Stuff the roll in the container and draw up the center piece a little. This is where you'll start pulling the wipes.

You will need 2 cups of water. I pre-boil my water, to sterilize it. We're not adding any preservatives, so I do this as a precaution. In months of making baby wipes I've never had a problem, but I've heard they can start to mold. Add 2 tablespoons fractionated coconut oil to the water. (Fractionated coconut oil is coconut oil that has be processed so that it is liquid at room temperature. You can purchase it here.) 

Then add essential oils. I do about 5 drops of lavender. This smells great, but it's not only for scent! Lavender soothes skin irritations, helps skin heal, and is soothing and calming. If you haven't experience lavender's essential oil, it's Nothing like synthetically created lavender scent  that you'd find in dryer sheets.  It's lovely. You can buy it here.

Alternatively, add 3 drops each of lavender and melaleuca. Melaleuca also has cleansing and regenerative properties. I don't think Melaleuca's smell is as pleasant, and it's so strong so I didn't want to use it on Mikayla when she was just a few days old. I figured I'd add it if she started getting rashes, but that hasn't happened yet.

Stir it up and pour it over the paper towel roll. Pop the lid on. The liquid will slowly be absorbed throughout the whole roll. Here my photographer noted how wonderful it smelled.

My new discovery is that the extra paper towel sheets that I removed from the roll fit beautifully into standard plastic wipe containers. If they're folded accordion style, they continue to dispense through the hole like tissues. This works so well; a little jerk, and the sheets rip off each other. Now I have my homemade wipes in two places.

Save money...get a better product...what more convincing do you need? As soon as we started using these wipes, Mikayla's diaper rash healed and hasn't come back. Besides, you can safely use them for more things, without worrying about the cost per wipe, or yucky chemicals in them. Sometimes I wipe Kayla's face with them (carefully avoiding her eyes) when she has a little rash on her chin from drool. Anyone can use them as a personal wet wipe. Lavender has so many healing properties, you're bound to be doing something good for yourself however you use them!

a baby's language, part 2

Mikayla is over 6 weeks old. I can't believe how fast time has gone with my second. The first six weeks with JP seemed to last ages at the time. The days were so long, and hard, and not to mention I was still getting little sleet at nights with JP.

This experience is so different from my first. I'm sure part of that is different temperaments of my daughters, but I think the great difference is in me. I know more, have a whole lot more 'tricks up my sleeve' for dealing with a newborn, I'm way less anxious about everything, I have different expectations, different attitude. I feel no need to sweat the details. The result is quite different. For starters, our sleep is so much better than it was at this time with my first. But I'll go into that in another post.  For now, I'll tell you about the baby language.

I surely feel that I have a better sense of what Mikayla needs. Part of this is just from being a mom a second time around, but Dunstan's baby language has also helped a heap.  Here's what I found helpful:

1. The two clearest words that I can hear from Mikayla are EH (burp) and EAIR (gas). The EH is very clear.  I can hear that the sound is coming from high in her voice.  It just sounds like she's struggling with a burp. It's helpful to know quickly that she needs to burp. I can tell even when she's lying on a blanket and I'm not looking at her. I can tell a friend who's holding her what it is that she needs. 
2. The EAIR sounds to me like a low RRR sound. And I can totally tell that it has to do with lower gas. As soon as I hear that, I can help her by crunching up her body or doing "bicycle" with her legs and we can work it out before she's all-out crying in pain. Mikayla hasn't had a huge problem with gas. Maybe it's mostly because she just has a good digestive system, but I also like to think it's because when she has issues we can help before they get too painful. 
3. I don't hear the NEH sound (for hunger). I think this may be because my daughter is tongue-tied. While it's not serious enough to affect her eating, I think she cannot easily put her tongue to the roof of her mouth to make the N sound. She makes a coughing sound when she's hungry. In the middle of the night that's the sound I get up for. Anything else I sleep through or I let her work out on her own. Actually, I haven't gotten up for anything else in weeks, but that's another post... I usually just tell when she's hungry by her reflex - she opens her mouth toward skin or a finger if it's put on her cheek.  I think that reflex will be going away soon, probably by two months. I hope it's not hard for me to tell when she's hungry after that. 
4. The HEH and the OWH are harder for me to distinguish. I personally think OWH sounds more like AH, and I do occasionally hear that. More often I can tell she's tired because I know she's been awake for a long time, or I see her eyelids doing the blank stare or drooping. I haven't heard the HEH sound yet. 

All in all, it's been helpful. I love that I can quickly tell when she has a burp or gas problem.  I'd recommend a new mom or mom-to-be to watch the youtube video. I don't feel any need to purchase Priscilla's DVD program, but not having done it I can hardly say it wouldn't be valuable. 

a baby's language

A while ago this was going around the Internet and I mentally filed it away as a resource I wanted to pull out when I have an infant again.  One month to go!

To sum up, there is a woman who has genius in hearing - she has a phonographic memory and is a musical prodigy.  As a new mom, she discovered similarities of sounds for when babies had different needs.  Priscilla Dunstan has been on Oprah and other TV shows sharing this, and you can watch it here. (This is the longest youtube clip with all the background; there are shorter ones if you prefer, or just focus on minutes 2:15 to 9:00 for the basics).



I think this is amazing!  You can learn more on the company website and buy training videos.  She says on her website 9 out of 10 moms find it helpful.

I just think it would be life changing to know easily if my baby is hungry or tired or uncomfortable...  So I made this graphic to remind me what the sounds are.  You've got to watch the part of the video to really hear the sounds and know what to listen for, but I'm hoping this "cheat sheet" will help as I practice with my own little one. I will let you know if I have success with this!

I have a PDF of this sheet that I'd gladly share, but I'm not sure how to share via my blog. I guess if you'd like it, send me a comment with an email address. 

Sleep Teaching

Last year I read Bringing Up Bébé by Pamela Druckerman, and I loved it. She presents a different way of viewing parents, children, and their relationship from the typical American view. Her writing is engaging and entertaining. It is full of good advice, but it doesn't read as a self-help book. Rather she tells the story of her own parenting and shares research she gathered from French books and parents and American books and parents. She never places commands on how to raise children: this is so refreshing compared to other American books and magazines on parenting which seem to love spurting commands.

I made a mental note to re-read the bits on sleep before my next child.  I've only two more months before I can practice what I've read here, but I still feel like I'll forget the main points, so I wrote them all down.  Here I sum up the key points from her chapter "Doing Her Nights."

Of course with this list you miss out on Druckerman's wherefores and hows and examples, and her engaging writing. So consider this as a refresher course for those who read the book.  Or perhaps it will whet the appetites of others to read her book.  

• Believe a baby is a person who is capable of learning things and coping with frustration. Frustration is good for babies – it makes children more secure. 
• It is good for parents and babies when they sleep through the night, and they can do this from 2-4 months of age. 
• Babies need to be by themselves. Babies who learn to play by themselves in the day will be more content in the crib alone at night. Consider that babies need privacy – times when they are awake without any needs and all alone. 
• Place value on the parents' quality of life and not just the child's welfare. 
• It's the parents' job to teach babies to sleep well. Teaching a baby to sleep is a first lesson on self-reliance and enjoying one's own company. 
• The one most crucial thing is to do "le pause" – wait when your baby starts crying. Give them a chance to self-soothe. Observe them first. When babies cry, they are telling us something – listen to figure it out. 
• Babies make lots of noise in their sleep – they may be moving, but they are still sleeping. Don't think of these movements or noises as a call to you. 
• Babies wake up between their sleep cycles (about every 2 hrs) and they must learn to connect these sleep cycles on their own. They can learn this between two and three months old. Intervening between cycles leads to sleep problems. 
• Teach babies the difference between night and day by refraining from holding, rocking, nursing the baby to sleep in the evenings. 
• Between midnight and 5am, re-swaddle, pat, re-diaper, walk… Only if the baby continues crying should you nurse. 
• If you miss the 4-mo window for "sleep teaching," you must do "sleep training" – having the baby cry-it-out. Either go "cold turkey" or take it in stages, and it will succeed in a few days. As you do this, explain to the child what you're about to do. Consistency is key. 

parenting

Despite the annoyingly-catch-your-eye-title, this article was good:

"Why French Parents Are Superior" from the WSJ 

I'd recommend reading it, and watching the video in the middle of it that expands on the ideas, if you're into that sort of thing.....  

En bref: it's written by an American mom living in France, who noticed that French children did not act like American children. She began to study the differences, find that other such studies had been done, and she wrote a book.  I think it'd be an interesting read.

I'll highlight the differences.  The French parents view themselves as authorities. {Crazy concept, no?  Apparently American parents do not.} They see their role as establishing a frame with firm boundaries where their children have freedom within.  French parents place a higher value [than American parents] on
- teaching delayed gratification  (learning to wait, patience, etc...)
- independent play (connected to...)
- adult time
- trying all kinds of food
I'm sure the book has more.  She wrote nicely, and I think it would be an éclairante et agréable read.

The ideas aren't revolutionary, and I think they follow biblical values.  But perhaps the majority of American parents won't accept these values on the basis of them being "Christian", but would be willing to try them as "French"?  Hmmm.

parenting

I want to continue to expound on thoughts from the PS of my last blog post.

"Being a mom to a baby is hard. It's hard physically. Being a mom to teens and adults is hard emotionally."

First, I really appreciated how my friend made her comment. She wasn't trying to belittle my current situation. She was sharing where she was, without trying to say "oh, my difficulties are so much worse than yours."

But it's continuing to make me think. So here's what I think.

First, being a new mom is hard physically. Especially for the first 3 weeks. Wow. That part isn't so bad now, at 3 months. To me (aside from lifting heavy strollers up stairs) the physical difficulty is being tired: being up late in the evening her wide awake when we're all ready for bed; getting up for her early morning feeding.

But it is hard emotionally too. I am learning to love a brand new person in a way I've never loved someone before. I'm learning to deal with a new level or worry that plagues me at an hour of the day or night. I'm learning to relate to my husband again, now as a mother and he a father. I'm learning to relate to other moms in a new --and wonderful-- way. And I've got to learn to re-relate to women who aren't moms. My identity is changing in becoming a mom more than any other life experience, and I'm still muddling through that. Not that I don't love it -- but it's hard!
But here's the hardest part: being a mom to a new baby is so hard because I'm learning in a whole new way what it means to serve and to put others first. I had not realized how much I had the opportunity to be selfish before. Getting married challenges it a little bit a first; having a child brings it to a whole new level.

And this dying-to-self is hard. It's not that I don't love Julie and love taking care of her. It's that I love myself a lot, and Jesus is working on me.

You see, the feeding, diapering, laundry, etc. isn't the hardest part -- the hardest part is not getting to do what I want. I love sitting andnursing my baby - love it ever so much. But I also love sitting in a clean house, and daily I have to sacrifice my wants over her present needs.

So what I'm saying is that for me what's hard is not getting to clean the house, bake cookies, write work emails... What I'm substituting my time for is completely wonderful and worth it. But I'm sinful, and so not getting to do what I want to do at any given moment is hard. And oh so good for me.

I just read this fabulous blog post: "To the Mother With Only One Child" by Simcha Fisher. She hit the nail on the head, and I needed to hear this so much. I strongly recommend following the link.

feeding

This blog is about whatever is going on in my life and on my mind. And lately, it's been nursing.

The first thing I must get out is that I had NO idea how feeding a newborn is all-consuming. It's so frequent, and takes so much time, that my life revolved completely around it for nearly 3 months, and still does to a degree.
It's like this. A newborn feeds every two hours, and sometimes more frequently. Now, in text it doesn't actually sound that overwhelming, but look at it this way. Julie's feeding took at least 40 minutes. Sometimes it'd take a hour, because she'd fall asleep, and I'd re-awaken her, and take some time for burping, and I didn't know if she was done, so I'd let her eat for a whole hour. Now you do the math: if we eat every 2 hours and she takes 1 hour to eat, I have 1 hour before it's time to eat again! {Plus that means half of my day is feeding.}

Basically, our day went like this:

• breakfast
• second breakfast
• elevensies
• lunch
• tea
• supper
• dinner
• late night snack

Usually that was about right. Sometimes there were 9 feedings...
When you consider that the hour between feedings, every other hour, has to include my meals, getting dressed (on a good day, showering), laundry, dishes, etc., it's a wonder a new mom could ever get to the grocery store. And if she did, think how well-timed & fast it has to be: in the hour before feeding, I'd need to make sure I was showered, dressed, packed, list made, etc. Directly after feeding, I'd have to diaper Babes and get her dressed and in the stroller. If that takes (optimistically) 10 minutes, and it takes only 15 minutes to get wherever I'm going, I have a whopping 20 minutes in the store! And I better not dream of popping in another store on my way home, or I'll be in danger of having a screaming, hungry baby on my hands.

I write this because I wish I could have read this in September...I hadno idea what it would actually be like to be at home alone all day with a newborn. [And I'm sure it's not everyone's experience. Some babies must be faster eaters; those bottle feeding can share the duty, etc. etc.] But just as I wish I could have read that and known I was not alone, I also needed to be told that -that particular difficult aspect of parenting*- does NOT last long. It doesn't feel like it could be true while you're in the middle of it, but now (at 3.5 mo) I see it was over in the blink of an eye. Since Christmas, we've usually had three hours between feedings, and it's like the day has been handed back to me. I'm not constantly wary of the clock, ticking toward feeding time. The sun is a bit shinier, my eyes a little less glazed, and here I have a moment, while Julie naps, to write about the thoughts swirling in my brain.
But I ought to close with this, lest I dwell on what's negative and seem complaining...I said it before, but it ought to be said again...This is the hardest job I've had, but it is the most wonderful.

* PS: I've recently been told about how parenting is hard. Sometimes, when they ask me how I am, and I tell them like it is, I get a condescending (or perhaps I imagine it), "It gets harder. When they're older, the troubles are bigger." And that isn't really all that kind or helpful. Perhaps they are right, or perhaps it is because the difficulties that are so present to me are faded in their memories. Either way, when I hear that I feel "shushed" or slighted.

This weekend, a dear friend said to me (in a thoughtful, carefully spoken way): "Being a mom to a baby is hard. It's hard physically. Being a mom to teens and adults is hard emotionally." That was so helpful: being affirmed that what I feel is hard really is hard, while getting to hear her older perspective.

laughing

She has giggled, she has smiled, she has cooed. And we've enjoyed it, and even called it laughing for several months now.

But last night, for the first time, Julie Anna really laughed.  The kind you could write as "haha".  Her daddy was blowing raspberries in her face.  [We were reading together about what she might be able to do by now, being 3 months old, and what we might expect in the next month.  Making buzzing sounds is one of them.]

Her laugh was such a really laugh it made us laugh out load.  So contagious.  So delightful.

The first three months are super hard.  Some of the hardest of my life.  But they have been the most rewarding.

This morning, Julie seems pretty miserable.  We've all got colds, and she's had it too, but today seems worse somehow.  It feels that all she's done is whine, eat or sleep, and that is not like her!  But then suddenly she gives me a smile, and sucks contentedly on a few fingers and thumb.  And when she smiles, it makes my spit-up-y self who really wants a shower completely happy.

tummy time

Since most people don't put their babies to sleep on their bellies anymore, babies have to have tummy time to strengthen their neck muscles.  At least, that's what most websites say, and my pediatrician says to too.

But I found tummy time to be very tricky when Julie was newborn - particularly for the first six weeks or so.

First of all, there is just not that much time in the day with a newborn!  Between eating and crying and sleeping, there is only so much happy play time.  Maybe 15 minutes between each of the feedings.  Often none if her tummy is bothering her.  And if I have to go out, and she spends it in the stroller, or if I have needs [showering? eating? getting out of pajamas? or other such minor necessities that suddenly become luxuries with a newborn] then I miss the happy window for tummy time.  

She didn't like tummy time, so I didn't want to put her down on her belly when she was already crying. And of course if she wasn't crying, I wanted to enjoy it, and I didn't want to move her from what she was happy to do.  

I also found it very tricky to get her onto her tummy when she didn't have any head or arm control. And it's even more awkward to pick her up off of the floor from her belly.

When I did put her down, she often just turned her head to the side and sucked on her first, or on the blanket.

So this is why in six weeks she got maybe 6 minutes of tummy time...

But here's what I've learned so maybe I could do it better next time.

Tummy time after the bath is good. In a warm bathroom while having a massage -- if she's still happy after I've done her front, I roll her onto her back, and sometimes she is content for a few minutes while I'm rubbing her back.  

Lay her down with her chest on a pillow and her arms sticking out.  You can put a toy, like a mirror, under her.  This way she can't just lick the blanket.

Put your feet up on the coffee table, creating a sort of angled table with your shins.  Lay her tummy on your lower legs with her head just up above your knee. Then she can look up to see your face.