Skunky.

Friends, I've gone over to the dark side.

The.

Dark.


Side.

I've given up cloth diapers.

(Short moment of silence whilst I hang my head in shame and defeat.  Please feel free to use this time to point, laugh, judge, and scoff.  Better yet, if you know me in "real" life, DO remember that it was I, who only a month ago, was enthusiastically detailing my LOVE for cloth and attempting to make you feel like a miserable failure at life for your unwillingness to save the earth and your precious baby's tiny bum from the known and even worse, unknown evils of disposable diapers.  That was me.  I'm an asshole.  Can we move on now, please?)

The tagline for my blog is "mastering the universe, one cloth diaper at a time."  Dammit.  Somehow, "mastering the universe, one chlorine-laden diaper at a time" just doesn't have the same ring.

(I'm not really sure that I'm going to use chlorine-laden diapers, but the dramatic effect of toying with the idea is one I can't pass up.  Truth is, I spent all of my precious-few research-ready brain cells figuring out the PERFECT cloth diapering system, and since that has failed me, I find myself in Target feeling like Alice in Wonderland and staring hopelessly at piles and piles of shiny plastic packages covered in adorably swaddled baby bums knowing not what to do.)

Going through infertility, I had these symbols of motherhood in my head, things I needed to experience to make this life a full one: baby wearing (check), breastfeeding (check), cloth diapering (check)...

I had not planned to give up cloth until the babies were successfully destroying Cheerios with streams of urine in the big-boy potty.  But then our diapers got skunky.

I tried stripping them.  Spent a week with the babies in disposables running back and forth to the washer every hour to set another hot water rinse.  I tried Dawn.  I tried Bac-Out.  I tried leaving them in the sun for three days.  I tried Borax, bleach, washing soda, new detergent, no detergent, a wet pail, a dry pail, and standing on my head in front of the washing machine chanting ancient diaper-cleansing chants.

And finally, they were clean.

Relief.

I transitioned the babies out of disposables and back into cloth.  We went through our full supply, and I washed them using my new sure-fire method.  The next morning, I brought the babies into our room to nurse. I lay in bed with them, thinking about the day, and smelling...something.  I nudged Kyle.  "Our house was sprayed by a skunk.  Do you smell that?"  He hadn't even opened his eyes before I realized my mistake.  I looked down at my two sweet babies in their adorably massive cloth diapers.  Damn.

I've recently decided to test my limits and sanity by taking on some new projects around the house.  In an insane moment of overestimating the hours in any given day, I gave up buying cereal, cookies, hummus, bread, and yogurt to make my own healthier, cheaper, organic versions.  Add to that, I've been making the babies food from scratch all along, which isn't difficult or incredibly time consuming.  It is, however, something that is not particularly optional.  "Sorry guys.  Mommy didn't make any steel cut oats today.  Would you rather have a beer?"  I've started a garden.   Blah, blah, blah.  I'm busy, and I take on too much.  And I usually balance "too much" just fine, because I don't usually mind teetering on the steep edge of total insanity.

But I'm a smell person.  A laundry person.  I don't like skunky.

So last week, in a crazy and wild moment of letting something go, I gave up on cloth.

Because washing each load of diapers six times in scalding hot water is at best questionable in environmental-friendliness.

Because I don't have time any more.

Because I'm not a martyr, and I'm not perfect, and I'm working on being softer with myself.

Farewell, cloth.

It goes so far beyond Facebook...

Standing up and demanding that breastfeeding be normalized in our society goes far beyond the issue of whether some people are uncomfortable with the sight of a mother nourishing her child in the best way possible. If this video doesn't give you chills, doesn't outrage you, and doesn't make you question the corporate corruption that too often drives our society, I'm not sure what will.

We need to demand change.

And as a breastfeeding mother who fiercely and adamantly believes that breast is best - I think it is incredibly important, essential even, to point out that this is NOT an attack on mothers who choose not to breastfeed or are not able to. This is an attack on the societal pressures that contribute to an environment where the benefits of breastfeeding are incredibly marginalized and where mothers who choose to breastfeed are often stigmatized, judged, and harassed. Despite the fact that the WHO recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life, 2003 CDC data shows that in the US, only 14.2% of mothers were following that recommendation. And did you know that in 2006, the United States had the second worst infant mortality rate in the entire developed world?

Where are our priorities?

A society that surrounds young girls with Barbie and her ridiculous body measurements, where approximately one in four females experiences sexual violence, where breastfeeding mothers are asked to leave public places , and where a major formula company can net profits of over 9 billion dollars a year, I really wonder HOW we expect mothers to choose breastfeeding and stick to it. US hospitals are notorious for giving babies bottles even when asked not to by mothers attempting to establish breastfeeding. I've posted about my own experiences struggling to teach my preemies to breastfeed and the hurdles I ran into with lack of hospital support, and I assure you that I am not alone - not by a long shot - in that experience.

Facebook, I'm afraid, is only the tip of the iceberg. It is simply symbolic of the environment we sit in.

But.

We have to start somewhere. We have to start everywhere.

I don't know about you, but I don't want to be defined by the society I described above. To the core of my being, I believe that we are better than this.

You can learn more. You can help.

• This earlier post lists things we can all do to help...here are some additions to that list, many of them courtesy of your comments...thank you!
• Baby Milk Action - helping to protect babies from unsafe breast milk substitutes and protecting breastfeeding
• Help get Ellen on board - it may sound silly, but we NEED mainstream media support and exposure
• Offer to become a Roots of Empathy family, or become an instructor. Roots of Empathy brings attachment parenting, including breastfeeding, into the classroom.
• Offer to visit your a local classroom or daycare as a pregnant woman, and then do follow up visits with the baby.
• Support the Nursing is Normal initiative: http://www.kathyobrien.org/NINgallery.htm and on Facebook.

This list is a small sampling of how you can help - if you have an idea or know of a resource, please share and I will post.

Poop. Yup. Poop.

So if you were so excited to get to the juicy details and skimmed over the title, let me offer it once more. This post is about poop.

Is this what it has come to? Am I forever reduced to the intrigues of BM's? Will I ever get out of sweatpants and brush my hair again? And when will Pandora get it through its thick cyber-brain that I unequivocally do not want to listen to songs by Barney?

But the reality is that this is a fleeting moment in time. Almost nine months have gone by. Nine months! And when I wanted this, I wanted it all. I'm going to savor every last drop: the faces they make when trying a new food for the first time, their fascination with Bella's food dish, the sweet, cooing mamamamamamamamama sounds they make. And poop.

Prior to motherhood, I had heard tales of this ridiculous obsession with poop that afflicts many new mothers. I knew that I would never be one of those. And for the larger part of nine months, I haven't been. It kind of went like this: Babies eat. Babies poop. Parents change diapers. Repeat. What's there to get all in a tizzy about?

And then we started solid foods.

From there, poop has just really gotten, well, fun. Kind of like the train wreck that is Jon and Kate Plus Eight. You're sick of it, sick of them. Yet you can't seem to pull yourself away. You've Googled them on your lunch break just to get one more bit of delicious juiciness. You never know what it will be next. Or when they'll pop up in the news next to important stories like current events in Afghanistan. And so it goes with poop.

Sure, my new-found interest in poop does little for the resume. I don't care. It may be wildly indulgent of me, but I'm embracing this long-awaited milestone of motherhood and sharing. Poop stories. I'll keep them brief.

***

I get periodic emails from Babycenter.com which I find mostly annoying. Recently, one arrived in my inbox titled, "Baby Poop. A visual guide." UGH, I thought. How disgusting. How insulting. Like new mothers have no need to know about more important things in this world. Three seconds later I was scooping that email out of my trash box like it was candy and scanning through the images while performing a mental comparison of every diaper I've ever changed. Satisfied that my babies are the proud owners of normal bowel habits, I closed the email and promptly deleted my browsing history. (Now you have to know, don't you? Here.)

***

The other day I was changing Quin's diaper. I love to make the babies giggle by giving them big tummy tickles and raspberries. I was going in for some good gigglage when I noticed a tiny little bead in his belly button. What a bizarre find! I scooped out a perfectly round little piece of clay. And as I was inspecting this clay, racking my brain to figure out how it got in there, holding it close to my eye to determine it's origin, it came to me. Feces. Poop! On my finger. Close to my eye. Out of my child's belly button. A perfect little ball of poop. Do not judge my diaper changing abilities, or the thoroughness of my wiping. They're perfectly fine. The poop ball just happened. I don't know how.

***

Every night before bed, the babies get a warm bath. We've gotten into the habit of changing them on the living room floor (does anyone actually use a changing table?) and then leaving the dirty diapers and clothes while we give them their baths and put them to bed. Once they're asleep, we get to the business of taking care of our messy living room, including putting the dirty diapers in the wash. The other night, one of the babies had a particularly huge blowout. After getting them to sleep, we decided a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, would be the only fair way to determine which of us would be responsible for taking care of the poopy explosion. I looked over at the two dirty diapers, hoping I would not be the one. And then I did a double take. The diapers were still there, but totally poop-less. The wipes we had used were not on the pile of diapers and covers where we had left them, but rather set aside in a neat little bundle. Even these had barely a trace of what had been there only minutes before. I looked at Kyle. He looked at the diapers. And then we looked at Bella. Laying on her bed, licking her lips.

***

I feel better. Purged, even.

The bubble.

Today the babies had their first shots.

I've held off on shots up until now because I think I'm smarter than the American Academy of Pediatrics and their "recommended vaccination schedule." Plus, since I'm not sleeping with all the drug companies who manufacture vaccines, I figure I have a much less biased view on what's really necessary.

And I've researched the issue. Beyond watching Jenny McCarthy on Oprah. Beyond word of mouth concerns about autism and mercury (incidentally, mercury is rarely used in vaccines these days). Beyond the popular conversations on vaccines is a lot of information that I find concerning. Like the fact that the FDA recommends an infant not receive more than 30 micrograms of aluminum in one day, yet most infant vaccines contain anywhere from 125-850 micrograms of it because the FDA doesn't regulate aluminum levels in vaccines. Although it has been established that aluminum can cause neurologic harm, aside from that we really don't know much about how toxic it really may be because it hasn't been thoroughly studied. So suffice to say, I don't feel all warm and fuzzy about injecting my sweet babies full of it. I also don't like the idea of injecting my babies with formaldehyde, MSG, human lung cells, or monkey kidney cells (to name just a few other savory vaccine ingredients). So.

We're lucky to have a fantastic doctor who is willing to customize a vaccination schedule that seems a little less in the pocket of drug companies. For instance, she agrees that our babies are at low risk for Hep B since it's mainly an STD and last I checked the babies aren't yet sexually active. So we're skipping that for now and waiting until they're a little more likely to get lucky.

Anyway, enough non-subtle harping. We are vaccinating, just at our own pace and only when it makes sense.

Today was time for their first shot. HIB, for those of you who are curious about which vaccine my high and mighty self deemed important enough to subject the babies to.

And ouch.

The way their little faces crumpled and their eyes formed tiny tears. The way they cried and then pulled themselves together. The way they fussed all afternoon. The way they refused to nurse. The way they cried without consolation every time they bumped their sore legs. Quin's little fever and swollen, red thigh. Rhys' insistence on continuing to play.

Maybe I'm a little overly dramatic. But they're my babies. And I chose this, knowing it would cause them pain but that it was for the greater good. So ouch. Ouch knowing that this was the first but certainly not the last time I will have to choose some bad with the good for them. Ouch because I can't protect them forever.

Ouch because a Hotwheels band aid and some infant Tylenol won't always fix it.

Ouch.

Oh, Freecycle, how do I quit you?

I hoard Freecycle emails.

I have belonged to two local Freecycle groups for well over a year. And yet I've never given anything and never taken anything.

Once I tried to get a Canadian rocker for the nursery, and once I tried to get some rocks. The rocks were not for the nursery.

I get about six Freecycle emails per day. They drive me crazy. Mostly because I'm compelled to read each one, lest I should pass up the opportunity for something really good. Like rocks, which I definitely actually have right outside my very own door.

Every time I realize that I should remove myself from the Freecycle mailing list, I'm hit with an overwhelming wave of panic over what I might be passing up the next time my neighbor decides to offload some of their crap to somebody else.

But I don't need their crap. I don't want it, either.

I have too much of my own. Not like one of those crazy families from Oprah whose garage is secretly filled to the brim with granola bars and beach balls. Just a typical American collection of STUFF. And sometimes, I have the overwhelming urge to just go through my house and start throwing things away.

Because lately, as I fight the urge to bring out my inner Kate Gosselin and demand that my home remain absolutely meticulous at all costs, I am finding that STUFF is wreaking havoc on my dreams of clean.

I refuse to let my husband take off to France with a much younger girlfriend and start wearing Ed Hardy garb. Which basically means my only other option is to get rid of STUFF so that I can simplify and reach a higher standard of clean without having to get all crazy bitch-ish.

Here's where I start:

Freecycle emails are going into a special folder. I will not read them. But Freecycle gets all the STUFF that eBay doesn't want.

STUFF, be warned. Get useful, or get out.

A Crib!

One of my husband's co-workers has offered us an almost-new crib.

PEOPLE SEE US AS PEOPLE WHO WOULD NEED A CRIB!!!!!!!!!

A feeling of real-ness abounds...a feeling I've been waiting for. We were offered a second-hand crib!

And of course we'll accept. Not only does it make me feel like I'm taking a small step towards my goal of environmentally responsible parenting, not only does it solve the problem of whether to buy one crib or two, but it means I will have in my house a physical representation of the moment this all started to feel real.

A second-hand crib never sounded so good.