The Varied Colours and Textures of Life

Before Baby Badger arrived in my life I would never have imagined the level of fascination I have for nappies. This fascination is on many levels.

Firstly, there's the sniff test. Don't deny it, we've all done it. You're at Baby Music group, or chatting to another mum over coffee, and you've a sneaking suspicion that the odour permeating the conversation is coming from your little darling. What do you do? Start the laborious process of removing layers of clothing without invoking the wrath of your child, or simply lift them into the air and sniff the nappy region? The latter, obviously. My core screams "euughhh", but the now-seasoned mummy in me says "perfectly practical".

Secondly there's the type of nappy. I wrote many months ago about my aspirations to stop Baby Badger from winning the battle of Baby vs The World. We started off as evil/convenient as we could be: a popular brand of disposable nappies (partly because they were the only ones that did a size small enough for our tiny daughter) together with one of those magic bins that seals the soiled nappies away in what looks like a string of plastic sausages. Non-degradable nappies double-sealed in plastic. Cringe.

Since then we've moved onto supposedly better disposables, in this case Bambo Nature nappies. They claim to be fully degradable, although I'm not sure whether the tabs will actually break down. A rival of theirs, Moltex, have actually been proven to be fully degradable to the extent that one city council (I think Leicestershire) have agreed to take the nappies in their compost bins. Of course, that did mean we stopped using the magic nappy sausage machine as there's no point wrapping degradable nappies in impervious plastic; we now use degradable bags.

Our final step was to cloth nappies, prefolds (which, confusingly, aren't the nappies that are folded to look like disposables). We are doing it the yuppy way - we found a laundry service. Once a week they pick up the soiled nappies and drop off a bag of nice clean ones. I tell myself that it's far more hygenic and environmentally  friendly for the nappies to be washed and dried in bulk (which may be true) but obviously I'm doing it to avoid the yuck factor! If we go away or out on a long day out we revert to the eco-disposables, but generally we're using the cloths and I feel very virtuous! It's been going well for the last four months and I intend to continue.

Finally, we come to the real fascination... the nappy contents. Poo! Yes, I said it! When Baby Badger was young, the fascination was checking that poo was frequent enough. I was terrified that after her shaky start she might not be feeding enough, so I counted daily nappies, assessed their weight. Yum. Now that she's piling on the pounds I don't worry about that. No poo for five days? No problem... just brace yourself for the poonami when it arrives.

Now that we're on solid food, the fascination is in what's coming out. Is it liquid and yellow, like breastfed poo? If so, she's obviously not been eating much for a few days. Has she been chewing? Definitely not in the case of peas, but strangely yes with sweetcorn kernels (or at least the majority of them). Why does banana poo look like worms - it's very disturbing! Is the black bit olive, mushroom or aubergine? How many days does it take for a piece of chicken to come out the other end? I've not yet attempted beetroot, mainly because we'll probably have to throw away whatever she's wearing, but partly because when it "appears" three days later I'll have forgotten what it is and end up at A&E in a panic!

This post is part of the Poo Carnival over at Notes From Home. Why not head over there now and see who else joined in?

Image: tungphoto / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Green poo, the importance of a good latch and other musings

We've been very lucky with Baby Badger. After our early difficulties with feeding in the first few weeks, she's been a good little feeder: hungry (although thankfully not constantly so), hardly ever sick and nothing beyond the expected amount of trapped wind. We completely escaped the colic that two of my NCT friends were plagued with for months. That was until we went on holiday.

Here I divert slightly... Other than spending a week travelling round the north of England to visit relatives, my grand plan for our week away was to wean myself off co-sleeping. Baby Badger was 5 months old and soon to outgrow her crib so she would need to move into her own room: if I couldn't get her out of our bed how on earth would I get her out of our room? I decided the best time to try this was while we were away: I wouldn't want to co-sleep in a strange bed, and Father Badger would be able to help me with the night shift as he wouldn't have to work the following day.

The first night was mainly spent treading the boards with a screaming baby. The second night was much the same. The third and fourth nights were better but still not much sleep was had. And so the week went. Unsurprisingly, we thought it was down to the change in sleeping arrangements. Then came the raging farts and consistently green poo!

We arrived home from our holiday rather tired, and Father Badger went back to work. A couple of days later I was at the local Children's Centre and mentioned the wind issues and green poo to the breast feeding advisor. She watched while I was feeding Baby Badger and said immediately: "she's grown out of that latch position". I had been sitting Baby Badger on my knee and leaning her over to the opposite breast - it meant that I didn't have to support her entire weight on my arms. It had worked for a couple of months, but she was absolutely right: Baby Badger's head was no longer tipping back and she was taking in air because the latch was bad.

It simply hadn't occurred to me that a good latch could become a bad latch.

A week later and we're back to good again. The wind has gone, as has the green poo (after a spell of being spectacularly green, in fact the greenest my health visitor had ever seen!), and Baby Badger is even spending the majority of the night in her own bed. Hurrah!

Image: nuttakit / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Volcanic Eruptions

It seems to me that early motherhood is about liquids of various sorts.

The obvious one is milk, in my case breastmilk. It's already become second nature to latch her on and I'm becoming a dab hand at multi-tasking: one-handed typing; propping Baby Badger on a pillow so I can eat my cereal; and this morning even found myself walking round, one arm supporting her, while I filled my handbag ready to go out. A month ago I wouldn't have thought it possible, but although I've become accustomed to breastfeeding, it doesn't mean that a break wouldn't be nice. Last night was actually the best so far - after her last evening feed at around 11:30, Baby Badger woke up at 4:30 and again at 7:30 - hurrah! One night, however, has not made up for the last two months of sleep deprivation so tonight Father Badger is giving me a break of sorts: he's doing the night feeding. I've spent a few sessions over the last day or so pumping and feel strangely proud of having produced over 200ml (about 8oz), which should do two feeds. I will of course have to wake up some time in the early hours to feed her otherwise I'll end up rather uncomfortable and leaky (!), but two lots of four hours sleep in one night will be heaven...

As they say, what goes in must come out. Wet nappies are hardly a trauma, although I guess if Baby Badger had been born a boy it might have been more hazardous [or perhaps the stories of dodging arcs of pee are merely urban myth - can anyone confirm?]. It's the other stuff... Another thing that I wouldn't have believed a few months ago - it's actually not that bad dealing with baby poo, and I'm told that's at least partially because breastfed baby poo is much nicer (or should that be less smelly) than formula-fed baby poo. It's only bad when it comes out in quantities that shouldn't be able to emerge from such a small body! Father Badger stumbled upon the perfect term for this: poo-nami, like a tsunami but made of... you get the picture. Baby Badger seems to store up several days worth, then let rip in one go! If we're lucky, we notice the first batch, and during the nappy change the rest comes out like lava erupting from a volcano. The scientist/child in me is fascinated by the volume (whilst yelling "eurgh" very loudly). If we're unlucky, we don't notice until the sheer volume starts to force open the leg holes on the nappy. Fortunately that's not happened too often and usually results in one of us holding a wriggly baby while the other hoses her down with the shower. Quite effective but it does take a tag team effort.

The last type is tears. Occasionally Baby Badger's if she's crying inconsolably, but more often mine. Don't get me wrong. Life is not bad, and I'm pretty sure I'm not depressed as I can laugh at the ridiculous and still have the drive to get out and about. The tears come after a few nights of particularly voracious feeding (the 90 minute feeding cycle a few weeks ago was particularly hard). I can wake up in the morning exhausted, but a quick hot shower sorts me out so well that I forget about napping during the day and when it gets to 9 o'clock at night I realise, too late, just how shattered I am.

Did I say the last type of liquid was tears? I was wrong. The last type is tea. How typically British of me, but it's true: the tears are more often than not sorted by a nice cuppa.

Image: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net