Currently, my only complaint is that he is a grunter. It's quite humorous during the day, but at night while he is sleeping and grunting, yeah, not so much a fan of that. I haven't figured out exactly why he grunts. Sometimes it's because he is uncomfortable so a change of position works, but other times he just continues his grunting. He's a noisy little fellow, but we'll keep him.
Here is the typical day in the life of lil' Carter. Let's start at our "bedtime." Carter usually eats around 11 pm. We all sleep and then the little man wakes up between 2 and 3 to eat again and then he falls back to sleep rather quickly. He wakes up to eat between 5 and 6, this time he takes longer to go back to sleep and the grunting begins. He sleeps and grunts for a couple hours. Then sometime between 8 and 9 he wakes up for yet another feeding. He usually falls back to sleep for a short while, an hour or so. He will wake up, hang out for a little bit and then want to eat again around 11 or 12. Once he gets his late morning feeding, he is out for several hours, sometimes he naps up to 4 hours! Then he is up wanting food around 4pm. At this point in the day, I have a hard time keeping up with his desire for food. He has been eating every 2 hours in the evening. And boy, if he doesn't get food fast enough, an all out screaming fit ensues. Seriously, you would think that he hadn't eaten in days with how he carries on. Is he just being a boy that when he is hungry, he needs food? I don't know, but I guess I am like that too, when it's time for me to eat, please don't keep me from eating or else I get ill. I don't lash out, but I guess if I didn't have another way to communicate then maybe I would. I should try it sometime to see if it works. So anyway, back to Carter's daily schedule. He eats at 4pm and then again sometime around 6 and then again around 8pm. He then sleeps until our bedtime, only to start the whole process over again. Breastfeeding is going very well. No pain and I'm still producing more than enough milk and I have managed the excess much better in the last two weeks as opposed to the first two weeks. Thank you God for the problem of too much! Despite the pain, I am grateful!
OK, on to diapers. I love using cloth diapers, ultimately. Let me explain what I do. During the day I use cloth diapers and at night I use biodegradeable disposable diapers. It takes about three disposables through the night and about 12-15 cloth ones during the day! Yes, I change diapers a whole lot! Now, some of the cloth diapers I use are exactly what you think of when you read cloth diapers--flat pieces of cloth that are folded around Carter's body and pinned with little, I mean big, yellow pins with a plastic cover over it. But the other ones, yes, the expensive ones, are sewed in the shape of a disposable diaper with snaps to secure it on. You know instead of the velcro like tabs that keep a disposable on, there are just plastic snaps in their stead. And the process of cleaning the cloth diapers is not near as difficult as you may think. I first tried to wet method of holding them until wash day. In that way, you shake out any loose pieces and drop it in a covered bucket filled with water. I've tried to dry method of shaking off the loose pieces and droping into an empty bucket. I have now figured out my favorite way--take the diaper of Carter and drop it into an empty diaper pail. When the pail is full, I turn on my washer, add soap, turn the diaper pail upside down to dump the diapers in the washing machine, turn on an extra rinse cycle and voila, as clean of diapers as I got out of the first two methods! How simple is that. Instead of putting a disposable in the trash, I put the cloth in a pail. Instead of taking the trash to the outside garbage, I take the pail to the washing machine. That's it.
Now, I do have to change his diaper more with cloth than I would with disposable, but really it's a difference of maybe 10 more minutes a day of changing diapers. In order to reduce the amount of crap in our landfill, it's worth it to me to spend that extra 10 minutes. Not to mention the cost savings! Carter would average 10 disposables a day, there are 40 in a bag, so that's $10 every 4 days. You do the math. Currently, that bag lasts me almost 2 weeks instead of 4 days. I hope to get to where his nightly schedule is consistent enough that I can use cloth. Oh, I also use the disposables if I go out and we are going to constantly be on the go or a bunch of people are going to hold him. Otherwise, if we go to someone's house or I just go out on my own, the cloth is our preference. Carter doesn't like to have a wet or dirty diaper, who would, so if he fusses, my order of checking is diaper, hungry, tired or reflux. It's always one of the four!
So two weekends ago we went to New Smyrna beach. Oh, how I've missed the beach! It's a slightly different experience with a baby though. We figured out some things that we need/want for convenience sake. Saturday we created a make-shift tent by opening the car door and draping material over it attached to bamboo sticks (New Smyrna's beach allows vehicles to drive on it and park on the top side of the beach; it's the best thing ever, not to have to lug everything out of the car and onto the beach).
Carter slept most of the time and we kept him covered with a light blanket. Scotty surfed and I sunned. It was a great time!
