my take on attachment parenting

there has been a lot in the news lately about attachment parenting. is it helpful, harmful, bizarre, the "new normal," even dangerous? here are my thoughts. 

we (at almost 9 months) are still breastfeeding. julia has three meals per day, nurses about five times per day, and has never had formula. we cloth diaper, we baby wear, and we don't let our child "cry it out."
the reason i have chosen these parenting practices is, i think, out of respect for my daughter.

yes, we breastfeed to save money, but it's also the healthier option for both of us. i want to eat healthy and i want my children to eat healthy, so i choose to breastfeed. as for her solid foods, i try everything before i give it to her because if i wouldn't eat it, why would i make my child eat it?

i wouldn't want to sit in a plasticky, papery diaper for hours on end. i wouldn't want diaper rash. given the choice, i would choose to wear cloth over plastic -- who wouldn't? so i do the same for my child's diapers.

babywearing is one of my favorite parts of being a mother. i love to snuggle my baby close whether we are on a walk through our neighborhood, at a park, or just doing things around the house. i would hold my baby all day if i could and babywearing helps me get one step closer to that. it is also very convenient in crowded places or places with uneven pavement where a stroller wouldn't be beneficial.

i wouldn't want someone to put me in a bed that i couldn't escape from and let me cry and scream until i was red in the face, sweating, soaking with tears and exhausted because they "knew what was best for me." we don't do that with our daughter.

a big part of attachment parenting is cosleeping. we do not and never have shared a bed with our child. we co-slept for the first three months of her life to better facilitate nighttime feedings, but then she moved to her crib. we do this for us, for our safety and for julia's, and we think everyone gets a better night sleep if julia is in her own room.

to me, so many aspects of attachment parenting just seem like parenting to me. they come naturally to me, and it makes it more enjoyable to be a parent.

cloth wipes

before my daughter was born, i decided that i would cloth diaper her. i had heard about cloth wipes as well, but i didn't really research them or know much about them. i figured we'd start with the cloth diapers and see where we would go from there.

when julia was about a month old, i had used all the disposable wipes in the house and was fed up with them. they stuck together, so when i tried to pull out one wipe, five of its buddies would come out with it. they were either too thick and not moist enough, or too thin and too moist. they'd rip and i'd end up with poop on my finger. not worth it. we had an entire trash can full of poopy wipes. i would put the wipes in one can and the diapers in a pail to be washed. it just didn't make sense. 

i looked online for different kinds of wipes, read reviews, etc. i was about to buy a box of 700-some wipes for $14. i told my husband, "wipes are so expensive!" "are they really?" he asked. "no," i said, "but any amount of money we spend, i think is a lot." so we didn't buy the wipes. i went to wal-mart and got a yard of white fleece for $8 and a spray bottle.

some babies have a sensitivity to fleece, so make sure your child doesn't before trying this. you can also buy cotton and cut it up, but because it frays, you would need to serge the edges. many cloth diaper websites also sell wipes. some people like to use washcloths, but i have found that they are too flimsy. i prefer those for wiping hands and faces.

i brought the fleece home and cut it into strips.   i filled the spray bottle with water and a squirt of baby soap. now, we spray a wipe, clean up the mess, throw it in the dirty diaper, and throw it all in the dirty diaper pail. we wash the wipes with the dipes, and they come out clean and fresh, and we use them again. this works very well for us, and is definitely the most inexpensive option.

review: kawaii pocket diapers

recently, my husband and i used some of our tax return money to purchase new diapers for our daughter. we budgeted $100 and figured we could get five or six new diapers. however, a friend told me about a line of diapers called kawaii. they average about $7 per diaper! i thought that we would "get what we paid for" so to speak, so we ordered one of each of two different kinds to test them out for a few weeks. we loved them! we purchased the heavy duty hd 2 and the heavy duty micro-fleece inner. 

at first, i liked the heavy duty hd 2 better because it fit julia better. the velcro crosses over in the front so it was able to fit her skinny body. the micro-fleece inner was loose in the waist and the legs, even though it said it was one size for 8 lbs-35 lbs. we had a few leaks. i started pulling the top of the diaper down towards her hips when i put it on her so that it would be tighter all the way around. lo and behold, it worked! no more leaks!

after testing the two, we ordered six more of each, paying a grand total of $85 for 14 diapers. so far, we love them all! 
they hold up very well and we have no leaking issues.


the diapers come with two inserts each (one for day, two for night). they are high-quality inserts, and i like the microfiber material more than i like the bumgenius inserts. we got yellow, lime green, and white with some camo. we also bought one snazzy minky urban camoflage because it's so darn cute. i like this diaper a lot, and might order some of the other prints in the future.

we will definitely be sticking with kawaii if we need or want to order more diapers in the future, and i would highly recommend them! we ordered them from the luv your baby and they have free shipping on orders over $80!

baby items you don't need

when i got pregnant, i began to think about all the little things that babies need -- the things that go on a baby registry, the things that diapers.com and babies r us tried to convince me that we needed. i have friends that use these items but you can definitely get by without them. some of them include:


wipe warmers

it's a nice idea! a nice warm wipe for the baby's tush. however, babies survived for a hundreds of years being wiped with a room temperature or slightly cold wipe. if they are used to warm wipes, what if they have a hissy fit when they are out in public and have to be wiped with a cool wipe? it also scares me that this needs to be plugged in 24/7 in the nursery. i wouldn't be comfortable with that. this is definitely not necessary.


bathrobes

 yes, it's adorable, but when are you going to put your child in this? personally, i wouldn't spend $40 on any piece of clothing for my child, let alone something she would wear for five minutes and then poop on? no thanks. 


a changing table

where do you put it? nine times out of ten, we change our baby in the living room. i'm not going to walk her upstairs just to change her. especially with newborns, walking them upstairs twelve times a day? no thanks. and there's just not room for a changing table in our living room, nor would it look nice. and in her room, we have a changing pad on her dresser. it just makes more sense.


shoes

i understand they are adorable, but babies aren't supposed to wear shoes. babies can't walk, and putting shoes on them can restrict proper growth and development in their feet. it's also easier for them to learn how to walk correctly when they are barefoot.


exersaucer

 if you're going to buy this, you might as well just get this ...

get an activity jumper helps your baby's leg muscles develop while he's playing.


and buy second-hand! these things are used for a few months and, after a good scrub down, are still perfectly capable of entertaining your child.


i bought this swing

 at a garage sale for $20 (msrp $134.99). i threw the fabric part in the washer and wiped down the plastic part with cleaner. good as new. it works perfectly and my baby loves it -- well worth the money.


i also bought a charming wooden high chair at an estate sale for $15. i have seen them retail for $80 up through close to $500. i was very passionate about having a wooden high chair -- something that actually looked like furniture. it has been sitting in our kitchen up at our table for about eight months now, and few people have even acknowledged the fact that our baby is still too young to sit in it. it just looks like it belongs! 


thanks for reading, and happy saving!

cost-effective cloth

we own 4 bumgenius and 2 fuzzibunz diapers. i did not buy any of them; they were gifted to us at my husband's diaper party and at christmas. we LOVE them. they work very well, and i love that you can adjust the absorbency with more or fewer inserts. (i like the bumgenius ones better because they are easier to adjust size-wise and the inserts are easier to put in. fuzzibunz inside is very rubbery and the inserts are tough to slide in.)

if you wanted to cloth diaper using only bumgenius, it would probably run you about $400. this would get you about 24 diapers (i have seen several websites that advertise a "buy 4, get one free" deal) and that would last about two days for a newborn, and 3 or 4 days for an older baby or a toddler. because i have never bought disposables, i don't know exactly how much they cost, but it depends on how often you change your baby, too. i'll estimate about $70 for one month (sourcesource) which averages out to about $840 per year ... or you could put that money towards cloth. just 6 months of what you would pay for disposables would buy you all the bumgenius you'll need for one baby .. and perhaps more! if you take care of your diapers they can last for more than one child. and that's for top-of-the-line diapers!!

we use our pocket diapers at night because they are more absorbent than our prefolds. to make our prefolds more absorbent and to help wick the moisture away from my daughter's skin, i purchased a yard of fleece ($8 at walmart), cut it into strips and sewed it on her prefolds. so, for 18 prefold diapers, we paid about $42, a little more than the cost of just 2 bumgenius pockets. 

we also have 3 diaper covers that we rotate between (two econobum and one thirsties duo wrap). i think i like the thirsties cover better because it has leg gussets that help keep moisture in. my daughter has skinny little legs right now, so before they get chunkier the leg gussets are wonderful. the price (around $12 each) is great for these too. 

all of the diapers we own (and probably all the diapers i will ever buy) are one-size. this means they are adjustable and fit baby from birth to potty-training. the only problem with this is that they look HUGE on my 10lb daughter. they don't feel huge or fall off or anything -- there's just a lot of fabric there, and i know as she keeps getting bigger the diaper will look smaller and smaller.

make your own laundry soap

i decided to make our own cloth diaper safe laundry soap!

here's how i did it.

ingredients

you can use just about any bar soap you like. a lot of laundry soap recipes suggest fels-naptha, which is marketed as a laundry bar soap. fels-naptha can be harsh, so i chose not to use it on our diapers. instead i chose baby soap. 

i found these ingredients in the laundry aisle at my local wal-mart.  (the soap was in the baby section.) all of the ingredients cost $8. we used to pay $18 for a small box of tide free and clear, and that's inexpensive compared to other cloth diaper laundry soaps.

1. grate bar soap with a cheese grater

2. i then put it in my old detergent box, and mixed it with equal parts borax (a deodorizer) and arm & hammer washing soda (removes particles and odors). they are both white powders. i think i ended up using about 3 cups of each. the bar soap came out to about two cups after grating it. 

i stirred it with a pasta spoon until it was thoroughly mixed together. we now have about 8 cups of detergent.

for an added boost, you can add a few scoops of oxy-clean or another stain removing powder. 

use one tablespoon for regular loads, or two tablespoons for large or extra soiled loads.
that's $8 for 128 loads of laundry. 
that's $0.06 per load. 

we plan to use this for clothes as well as diapers.