10 weeks old and diapers

It's Friday so that means, another week of life has passed by for our Love Bug. Oh, we found another Love Bug onesie that's a size up so we bought that one. At first we were looking at a discount store and that was for sale for about $5, then we went to the original store (Carter's) which has some stuff for sale and got the Love Bug onesie for about $2 in the Clearance rack. Talk about luck eh?

Having a baby is expensive. For those who are not sure due to finances and getting advice like, Don't worry, you'll scrape by, well..not to scare you but the baby grows out of clothes every 2 months, earlier if it's a newborn. Yet you still have to buy quite a number of them coz of spits, accidental poop smears, etc. Then, you have to get all their basic stuff before they are born like cribs, car seat, stroller, bath tub, etc. I also got an air purifier and humidifier..coz California is dry and it helps to humidify their nasal passages. Then the baby has to eat, if it's 100% breastfed, it's cheaper but sometimes the milk is not enough for the baby so you would have to buy formula. If you breastfeed, it's nice to have an electric pump, bags to keep the milk in, a bottle warmer and I even bought a small fridge upstairs to keep the milk in. It's great for me to have some time on my own coz Kev can feed her, plus it's a nice bonding time for Kevin and Brigitta too. The last expense I'm going to talk about is diapers. Now, I'm not a full time environmentalist but I try when I can. When I found out that diapers take thousands of years to decompose and it is the biggest problem out there for landfills, I thought of other options like cloth diapers. Also, I view this as a gift to Brigitta, setting her on a nice "green" path from her birth.

I started out slow in researching this, and then I realize there's this whole new avalanche of information on CD (cloth diapering). People love to talk about it, there's a market of people swapping/selling/buying them, cottage industries have popped up and there's quite a lot of choices involved. I have cloth diapered my siblings and that was simple. America had with it's ingenuity and capitalistic ways turned a simple thing like cloth diapering akin to coffee into Starbucks. I'm actually thinking with my sister to sell some of these products to Malaysia/Singapore. I found other benefits to CD, it helps with potty training and saves money. I actually like cloth diapering. I don't feel bad at all when I change Brigitta which is quite frequent. I know that some parents don't change the disposables as often coz it's expensive and the diapers absorb so well that it feels dry. I actually learnt a technique on how to keep baby's bottoms dry using cloth diapering. :)

Hmm...didn't mean to make this into a lecture. I'm actually writing about my research and experience on babies. It'll be great to make it into a book, esp if it can help new parents.

So, onto Brigitta's development. She now likes to pull her hair (gently of course) when she nurse. When she's really hungry, she will also make a humming sound too which is like a cat purring. Her hand skills are getting better, she will grab the edge of the baby carrier or me when I carry her on my back. The best thing is that she now is interacting with us a bit more. She smiles more easily than before and makes noises like talking back to us. She also looks around for me if she's held by Kevin so she's starting to recognize people. And our investment in the flutterbug, the toy at her crib, paid off. She's really happy when we wind up the toy and will just stare at it with a smile.

This week, we got her into her first pair of jeans. We could only do it when she wears disposables coz cloth diapers are a bit bulky. So the first photo below is her wearing her cloth diaper and a really cute diaper cover. The second one is her with jeans. We got the disposables in her 2nd week coz we thought it'll be good for night time and travels, but since we're so comfortable with cloth diapering we didn't use them at all. So, we are using them to finish them off. BTW, for her disposables, we found the green ones like Seventh Generation which has no chlorine and I believe decompose faster than the traditional ones. :) Like I told you..it's a Starbucks world of diapers. :)