Fluffy Butt!

So my newborn 4 month old(!!!), 7 pound 15 pound, 2 ounce baby boy, August Paul, is an exclusively cloth diapered and breastfed silly little guy. I cannot believe he is already so big! He's already teething too, but that's a whole other post. I wanted to just put out there how happy I am that we decided to cloth diaper! I figured I better write a quick review of how the newborn diapers we used worked for us rookie parents before he turns one and is potty trained and I forget completely....good lord. The first week DH(Darling Husband for all you non bloggers) did all the nighttime diaper changes while my tummy healed from the cesarean and so we used disposables because it was a little too much to handle without the lights on. But once we got acclimated, we had no issues. Our newborn arsenal included:

• 2 Dozen Green Mountain Diaper Newborn(orange edge) Organic Prefolds, purchased as seconds on the cheap
• 6 Swaddle Bees Newborn fitteds - also seconds from their clearance section on their website here.
• 5 Thirsties duo covers, size one
• 2 Lil' Joeys by Rumparoos
• 3 Dream Eze Organic Cotton fitteds size small- purchased on the cheap from babyhalfoff.com
• 3 Thirsties Duo Fab fitteds, Size one

Lets start with what didn't work for us first. The Dream Eze fitteds - They fit horribly, leaks galore. The way they sew the soaker pad in is a little...how should I say....awkward? It just doesnt work. Its hard to get the two pieces to lay correctly on my sons little bits and creates very large gaps in the top of the diaper to allow "runoff". Pee went everywhere before the diaper could absorb it. Thumbs down. Now, the mediums work way better. The design just doesn't work well on a tiny little diaper.

On the flip side of fitteds, we LOVED the swaddlebees newborns. They are snap closure (which i thought would be SUCH as hassle beforehand) and also have a snap for the umbilical cord. They are also super soft and the fit was great! They absorbed very quickly and he didn't seem to mind being wet in them. They contained even the biggest poop-plotions as long as they were snuggly snapped on (daddy likes to leave them loose but that's ok ;) ).

The Thirsties Duo fitteds were super comfy for Auggie, easy to use because of the velcro closure, but he quickly outgrew them and I felt like the extra 7ish dollars cost over the swaddlebees wasn't really worth it. I would probably buy them again, but in snaps rather than velcro. The velcro for some reason got worn very quickly and just didn't stick very well by the time(remember is was a a short time, probably by 2 months) he had outgrown them. The absorbency was very good and he seemed to stay very dry despite them being soaked.

The prefolds were great, the plus side of prefolds is using the outgrown ones as burp cloths! And my little goober has reflux issues so we have used them religiously. I use a snappi and once we got the folding technique down, rarely had blowouts. A little less absorbent than the swaddlebees, but still plenty absorbent. The orange edge newborns only lasted 3 or maybe 4 weeks which really surprised me. But as aknew mom, I had no clue how quick he was going to grow!

Thirsties duo covers fit my 7lb little guy on the smallest settings, I just had to pull them up over the umbilical stump (which was very stubborn and didn't fall off until around day 16) or fold the top down a little to go under the stump. At home I never really put a cover on, unless I'm anticipating a nap or visitor. I kept my newborn baby naked(diaper only) for much of the first month because he was a sleepy nurser who didn't like to nurse unless he was nakey and wouldn't stay awake unless I tickled him the entire time! So no cover was really necessary without clothes to get wet. But the thirsties size one worked great all the way until he was about 11 or 12 pounds when he out grew them. I think we've only had one blowout where the poop shot out/up the back of the diaper. The gussets on the leg holes really, really do their job!

And last but not least, the Lil Joeys AIO (all in ones). They were great! I only wish I had them from the very beggining. They were the only diaper trim enough to fit under the cutesy newborn outfits. The only setback was the dry time, they probably took 90+ minutes to dry which is annoying. I got them second hand from re-diaper.com when Auggie was 2 weeks old, they worked for about the next 2 weeks, then the fit/absorbency just wasn't enough anymore. I would definitely buy again from re-diaper, but not new. But that's just because I'm frugal like that! Plus, I've heard it takes plenty of washes to get them into their prime absorbency.

Lets talk dry time. Cloth diapers don't dry on the "Auto dry time" settings. Learned this fast. The dryer always said they were dry when the seams and soakers were still damp. So we fired the auto settings. I then found out after some testing that the prefolds dry in 70 minutes, the fitteds dry in 80. with the introduction of wool dryer balls(6 of them from re-diaper) they dry time was reduced by 10 minutes each. I save time and money by leaving the fitted diapers in the dryer and they finish drying with the next load that goes into the dryer. No need to turn on the dryer again for the load when half of it is already dry.

OK, here's where I sort through the over 1,000 pics on my iphone to find sample pics not originally meant for a clothdiaper review...although still cute and will probably make me cry because he's so tiny...

Swaddlebees on a 4 day old Auggie passed out from nursing :') :

Thirsties Fab Fitted Duo size one, I think he's 2 weeks old here:

 Couldn't resist this one because of his expression! TeeHee

Thirsties Duo Cover Size one:

Lil Joeys Rumparoo:

Here's a picture of a medium Dream Eze, because I already packed up the smalls for storrage and i didn't take a picture of one on him ever. You can see the two thin soaker strips that fit awkwardly, the strip on the left shows how they get kinda twisted up in the wash making it even awkward-er. LOL:

OK, that's all for now on my fluffy butt baby!

G is (also) for Gillian

That's my name, Gillian. Jillian with a "G" as I've always had to refer to it. (Thanks Mom!) I'm 25, had my first son, August Paul, on March 29th of this year, and I've been married for 5 years to my high school sweetheart, Jeremy. We also procured three dogs and two cats in the meanwhile. Nova is our rottweiler mutt and Toby and Lucy are our pittbull mutts(both rescues). Our kitty cats are Lilo (short for "Uh-li-lo-hi" which is Cherokee for "adorable")  and Ellie Mae (which is short for the fatty black and white southern belle who people always think is pregnant). I really like parenthesis, haha. OK. Things you should know about me....or us...

- Nothing has ever been easy for us. We date, we get death threats.We get a home, it burns down. We decide to have children, we're diagnosed with unexplained infertility. You get the point. But isn't everyone's life that way? To some extent? I don't even know....Moving along

- We are non-denominational, however highly spiritual. We believe that God loves all people who are good. Regardless of their religious brand.

-We're frugal. We don't need much to make us happy. I like it this way. Eventually we will move to the mountains and try to atttain a off-grid sustainable living style. Yeah, I know what you're thinking "Damn dirty hippies!" We're just trying to break the cycle of 9 to 5 back breaking labor that deprives children of quality time with their parents and forces us to be slaves to our mortgages. The definition of hippie is "someone who rejects the established culture". If that's what you mean, then yes. We are hippies. Just not dirty ones, we rather like hygiene.

-Couponing is a love-hate relationship with me. I hate shopping, but love saving money, so if i can drag myself to the store you better believe i'm getting 40-50% savings!

- We are artists. I'm a sketch artist, I just have no time to do it because of that "slave to mortgage" thing I meantioned earlier. Jeremy is a metal sculpturist among other things. If you can dream it up and it agrees with gravity, then he can make it out of metal. No really! He's a third generation blacksmith. He's amazing!

- Our son is the light of our lives- The miracle that filled the holes in our hearts left by nearly 2 years of infertility. Correction; overfilled the hole, and flooded our lives with more love than humanly imaginable(unless you have already experienced IF of course). <3 It helps that he's been sleeping through the night since he was 5 weeks old as well! He's awesome! He is turning 4 months old on the 29th, I hate that he's growing up. But he does do cool new things everyday so I guess its ok....

- Lastly, we are goofballs. We are "goobers". 

Ta Da!

So I have a blog. I'm not sure I ever thought I would. But here I go, sending some hopefully entertaining text out into the blog black hole wondering if anyone will like me. Hows that for vulnerability?

Introduction: My name is Gillian. I'm a new mommy to my son August. I have a wonderful husband named Jeremy. More on us later... I have ten more minutes before I'm on the road with Auggie to the doctor.

G is for Green, and Goobers. I try to live as green as possible. (Which will be MUCH greener soon.) We cloth diaper our son, buy the alternative cleaners when we can afford it(thus my new couponing endeavor), and well, don't live THAT green, YET. It's in the works folks. This blog will help me stay focused on our green transformation, though it will be hard, seeing as I have the little goober who takes up quite a bit of time since he insists that I make funny faces at him and sing to him and generally love him all the time. (Ok, so maybe that's me who insists on it.) But when I'm not working full time, or loving on the first or second loves of my life, I'll attempt to blog; To make some sort of obscure difference in someones life. Even if its just giving tips on green living and updates on the shenanigans of the goobers I live with to family and friends who will of course be the first followers of this blog thing.

Ok, now for that gooey eye appointment for Auggie. Ta ta!