At Karston’s preschool, the teachers carefully dash out the name for each child to trace on the daily artwork. Tedious! Karston is learning to write his name, and I’d love to build on that at home, but I know I’m not going to draft all this tracing for him when I’m sure there’s a font for it … I found free trace fonts @ fontspace.com with the Print Clearly and Trace fonts. Much better!
We’re on the last stage of potty training, having crossed the (lack of Toddler) motivation hurdle, and we were headed into this turn, I was wondering why I couldn’t just snap in a liner in his underpants to catch the poop that wasn’t going in the potty (as has happened all week, hurrah! finally!). I thought about making some, but I don’t spend a lot of time sewing anymore … I seem to be chasing children instead! Wow, snap-in liners are not as common as I would hope!
Almost all snap-in liners only snap in the back, closer to the mess I don’t want to touch. Front and back snaps would probably be better based on this experience (with pattern too!). Cloth diapers with snap-in liners are usually called all in two. I understand that fleece can be too drying on Baby’s skin, but this is Potty Training and why would I want to wash an entire diaper when I just need to catch and toss the poop? I don’t understand pocket diapers, where you stuff a liner inside a pocket so that all pieces need to be washed, compared to the all-in-two, where the outer covers only need washing if something escaped the inner layer.
But here’s what I found.
- Mother-ease Snap-in Liners only snap in the back, but otherwise these are what I want at a great price.
- Rainforest Babies Snap ‘n Wrap Diaper (All-in-Two)
- Gro Diaper has the option for snap-in soakers (but the doublers don’t have snaps, only these soakers).
- gDiapers include snap-in liners.
- Tiny Tush Trim One-Size Fitted Cloth Diapers
- SoftBums PerfectFit All-in-2’s
- BerryPlush All-in-Ones or Covers … mmm, minky softness!
- Pampered Cheeks One-Size All-in-2
- Baby Softwraps All-In-Two Diaper Covers with Snap-In Soakers
- Sugar Peas Snap-In Diapers (I would link to the company website instead, but I’m opposed to Flash-only websites on principle)
- Always Fit Diaper looks similar
- Sammy’s One Size Cloth Diapers & Snap-In Liner
None of those are what I wanted to buy: just the liner, with snaps back and front. I would put matching snaps on his Fruit of the Loom tidy whitey underpants.
So I guess it’s a good thing that we’ve made progress this week after being stalled for so long. He could hold it overnight, go standing up or sitting down, go anywhere not just familiar places. He could even hold it for a long time while we were on a plane! We’ve been there for quite a while. But poop? Messy cleanup. Until this week! Thank goodness for ring pops and big stickers!
One of those nagging questions is what to feed your baby. If Cale is not getting as much breastmilk as he wants, he bites! Infant formula would be the standard answer, but as you replace breastmilk with formula, the rate of SIDS goes up proportionally. Plus Cale doesn’t like the taste of formula, and even the hydroplyzed formula for multiple allergies causes him a lot of uncomfortable gas (exactly what the hydrolyzed stuff is supposed to avoid). Well, thanks to a recommendation from a co-worker whose kids just a few months older than Cale grew up on this as a supplement, I tried Living Harvest Hempmilk. Cale thinks the taste is fine, he slurps it down, and he doesn’t seem to have any problems with it. Given his suite of allergies and how often something causes him gas, that’s pretty impressive.
One thing that helps is that the Original is lightly sweetened. Most milk replacements, like soy and rice milk, are either sickeningly sweetened too much, or chalky and not sweetened at all. Lightly sweetened is a nice compromise: enough to moderate and improve the flavor (I tried Hemp Dreams and didn’t like it at all), but not so much that I think I’m going into sugar shock.
Standard infant formula has 20 calories per ounce, approximately the same as breast milk. Formula for premature babies contains 22 calories per ounce. For comparison, this hemp milk has just over 16 calories per ounce, so for the newest ones, give as much breast milk as possible. However, especially now that he’s over a year old, I think this stuff and water are the greatest drinks for Cale! He likes both of those too.
At some level, I think we always knew this, but hadn’t codified it. Last night at bedtime, Karston said, Tummy still hurting. I don’t want to fall asleep. Just like that, he strung together his poor eating with his poor sleeping. I asked a few more questions, and Karston said he didn’t want to fall asleep while his tummy was hurting because then he has bad dreams. I’m impressed that he figured out that connection on his own just a few weeks shy of 3.5 years old. This makes me more confident in what was previously just my intuition: fix his eating first, then see if we still need to fix his sleeping.
I just wish I knew where to start! At Cale’s 9-month well-child-checkup yesterday, the pediatrician said we can try Zantac with Prevacid. She also gave us a prescription for Nexium to try next, to tide us over with ideas until Karston’s specialist appointment on February 25th. Everything we’ve tried so far gets less and less effective over the course of one month, and it’s very disheartening. He’s still on Prevacid because it’s holding ground to a little better than where he was before treatment; without it, he crashes to new lows.
Well, one of things I can do after a week-long trip with the kids is know how many diapers they go through (a closed system this week; usually they spend some time away from home not going to work with us). The answer is one toddler and one baby went through 52 diapers from Saturday mid-morning until now, the following Saturday evening. So about 7 diapers per day. And about half that for number of wipes. The boys are close enough in size that we just bought Huggies Supreme (they were on sale) size 5. Huggies Supreme seem to run a bit smaller than Pampers Cruisers, but they worked. They don’t seem as flexible, and I’m glad to get back to good ol’ Pampers. But then again, it’s all-around nice to be home again!
Karston has said two or three times in his month on Prevacid that bugs were crawling under his skin. At least one other person has felt this on Prevacid:
second time to try prevacid, acipex quit working, and again feel like my skin is crawling
I did some research on GERD to see what we can do to help Karston.
Gastroesophageal reflux in infants
- 15 - 40% improve on a milk-free diet, have casein allergy
- casein allergy tends to go away at 1 year of age
- PPI generally more effective than H2 blocker
We saw delayed weight gain (is it “delayed” when he’s 3 years old and still smaller than the 2-year-olds at his preschool?), projectile vomiting when he was an infant, and he was hungry all the time (day and night).
However, don’t be too fast to medicate. Don’t be too slow either, or you’ll be in our boat with a small child used cuddles all night and food whenever he wants!
Gastroesophageal reflux disease in children and adolescents
- raise head of bed
- avoid chocolate, peppermint, and acidic juices like OJ
- PPIs more effective
Karston often complains that his tummy hurts, he pounds his chest at odd times, and he really likes a firm adult hand on his tummy (think Napoleon’s ulcer pose).
Poor weight gain in infants and children
- eat often: 3 meals and 3 snacks, about every 2-3 hours
During catch-up growth, the amount of calories and protein that a child eats is more important than the variety of foods eaten. For example, if a child is willing to eat chicken nuggets and pizza, but refuses all vegetables, this is acceptable. At meal and snack time, solid foods should be offered before liquids. Fruit juice should be limited to four to eight ounces of 100 percent juice per day.
You know you’re tired when you wake up wondering how long your baby has been crying. I’m a very light sleeper, and usually wake up to the least sound, so I was astounded when I woke up Thursday night wondering how long Cale had been crying. Friday night was Allergic Watch for Karston (I was sure he was OK, but not so sure that I wasn’t worried).
Saturday night was almost as notable for the depths of sleep deprivation. I woke up at Cale’s first cry, tossed the sheet off … and had no idea who or where I was. More importantly, I had no idea where to go to rescue the crying baby until I remembered that Cale’s room is just across the hall. I did at least know I was supposed to soothe the baby.
We don’t know why Karston cried so loudly and so often last night, but Cale woke up for that and I had to keep nursing him back to sleep. Hopefully the kids will sleep better soon, before their parents collapse. We don’t get naps on weekdays!
Rubber bands are great (as long as they’re nowhere near a child’s mouth!!!).
We used rubber bands for early child-proofing to keep Karston out of cabinets, and they worked well. Of course, now he puts the rubber bands back on if you leave them loose, but he also no longer tries to get into everything. The rubber bands worked until he learned what not to do. Now that he’s older, he knows his toys and they’re more fun anyway.
I’m using a rubber band on my wrist to keep track of which side is next for breastfeeding. I’m faster on the setup when I don’t have to think, test, or remember which side Cale gets. Very handy, especially at night! I sometimes wear a pretty stretchy bracelet during the day, but at night the lowly rubber band is much more comfortable for sleep.
ToddlerDecember 1, 2007 10:11 am
We started using size 3 diapers last year on April 27th, and we’ve gone through thousands. (Really! At least 3,000. Mind boggling!) I thought Karston might wear size 3 until he potty trained! After all, size 3 diapers run from 16 to 28 pounds; he gains weight so slowly that I could imagine him being 3 years old and under 28 pounds. But he won’t be wearing size 3 next year after all.
Of the several kinds we tried, we were happiest with Pampers Cruisers. Although we had two bags of Pampers that didn’t have enough filling in the front (we had some night-time diaper leaks until we started checking how high the front filling went for night changes), overall the Pampers were the ones that didn’t have overnight problems.
Speaking of diaper leaks, that’s how I knew it was time to look at size 4 diapers! I read online that an increase in diaper leaks means that it’s time to consider the next size. We had two weeks of frequent nighttime diaper leaks, so I bought a pack of size 4 because if it worked, it was an easy solution … and it turns out that size 4 diapers start at 22 pounds! Karston finally crossed that mark, so it really is time to move up to the next size. In fact, we started some diaper sizes two pounds early. However, we’re still going to finish that case of size 3 over the next many days while wearing size 4 at night.
So it’s the end of a 20-month era, winding down for size 3 diapers and the calendar year.
