What G HATES!

Gray hates being wet, and I mean HATES. The only thing he might dislike more is being intubated but we haven’t tried that since day 4 and 5 of his life. We have confirmed that cloth is a better option for us, since we change disposables as often as we change cloth it seems.
I have however found something that will get us a few extra minutes out of a cloth diaper, and helps us get through the night without a diaper change. Bummis fleece liners totally do the trick. When G is soaking wet and has a liner in, the wetness passes right through the liner and it doesn’t feel wet at all. It can be a little deceiving when you don’t think he’s wet because the liner doesn’t feel wet at all.

I love all things Bummis! I like that they’re a Canadian company, and I like the integrity that they use when it comes to organic or recycled products and doing what’s best for the environment as well as the consumer. Bummis felt liners have been a life saver when it comes to wet diapers and a particular someone who doesn’t like being wet.

We have a few other things that we use and a few other brands that we use but Bummis seems to be our go to brand.  If you have a picky baby like mine they're definitley worth a try.

The Upside of Being Tiny

This past week we changed over Gray’s dresser by putting all this 0 to 3 month clothes in and taking out the smallest of his newborn clothes. He’s 4 and a half months old and about 10lbs now. There is an upside to him being so tiny.

The blessing of him being so tiny is that his heart has time to heal. He was born with a PDA heart murmur; he has a small hole in between the top two chambers of his heart. It is the most common heart issue for preemies or even full term babies. Our medical team told us that it usually takes until the baby would be year old for the hole to heal completely, and about 6 to 8 months for the doctors to no longer be able to hear it with a stethoscope. At our appointment at the beginning of June the paediatrician noticed that he can’t hear the murmur anymore. Amazing news! 

This is the upside of G being so tiny still. Because he hasn’t grown fast and needing his heart to grow to support his growth, his heart has had time to heal the hole a lot faster than anticipated.

We prayed and claimed healing for this back in the hospital, and I love that we’re heading back to Brampton soon to see the cardiologist to see what we’re looking at. I love that my God is bigger than what medicine says, and great than their timeline.

I promise I will never complain about Gray being so small again.

A Weekend Away

This weekend I left Gray with Brian overnight. We have an annual women’s conference at our church and I had invited my amazing sister in law Leah to join me for the weekend. We decided that we would make it a girl’s weekend, use our hotel points and get a hotel room and leave the husbands with the boys and just get away. It turned out to be perfect timing with some things that have been going on our lives and needing a little get away and some distractions. So away we went.

 I was a bit nervous, but decided to just be as Zen as I could. I knew that I had left more than enough milk for Brian and that he’s more than capable of taking care of Gray. I guess I was more nervous about how I would be away from G for so long. It’s the longest that I have ever been away from him. Usually it’s two or three hours that I’ll be gone in an evening or for a spa appointment. I remember the days in the NICU when the 8 hours we would take to go home and do some laundry and repack would drive me crazy and I would be so anxious to get back to the NICU and back to Gray.

I did have a few moments of weakness, especially in the evening when I wanted to come and take Gray with me for the final hours of the conference, but I prevailed and made it through the weekend.

Brian had more than enough milk, and had a great time just him and Gray. He also gained some understanding of what some of my days are like.

It was a great weekend away. Great to sleep in a hotel and not have to wake up to a screaming baby but to silence, and a great time spent with my sister in law.

CD update

We’re almost a month into our cloth diapering adventure and I’m loving it. We’re getting into a routine, and Brian is even more on board with cloth diapers. He wasn’t a hard sell from the beginning financially, but he wasn’t too sure how much he was going to be doing other than just changing diapers. This weekend he even washed and dried a load of diapers for me while I had a nap. I’ve done quite a bit more research since we got our first set of cloth a month ago. I’ve decided on the next set of diapers we will use when Gray is a bit bigger. Gray has out grown the first set of covers that we bought. Big milestone for us! This is the first thing that he’s outgrown. He’s out of preemie diapers now! So I went and got some Bummis covers from out local store. I got two kinds, by fluke actually.

I got a few Super Brite wraps, and a Super Whisper Wrap. Thing that I love the most about both of these is that the tabs are Velcro on the top as well – so for my little munchkin who’s waist is oh so tiny, I can overlap the tabs. I love the Super Brite because it has an extra leg gusset, so his tiny legs won’t let out any leaks. I also picked up a few dozen preemie prefolds to have until he’s a bit bigger and we can start using the infant ones. I’ll share how I conditioned them in a bit. I am able to use all the innards to the preemie diapers that we got, I just needed some new covers, but the prefolds are a bit more absorbant for night time. Last week I was checking out a new diaper store in our area and found some Bummis Super Lite covers! They may not be patterned but they are gorgeous none the less. Pro – they’re about 4$ cheaper than the patterned ones, con – they don’t have Velcro on the top of the tabs so I can only use them when G is big enough to not have the tabs cross. These covers have a great elastic strip at the back and around the legs as well, and they’re trim, no extra bulk here! 


Here’s my little Man in one of his cute new Super Lite wraps!


I’m so excited for where we are on our journey. I’m a total cloth diaper mama! Stay tuned for future updates. Maybe Gray will grow out of his diapers and we’ll be into the infant sized diapers!

Poop

Never in my life did I think that I would talk about poop so much! My mother in law and I have in depth conversations regarding poop. The doctors and I talk about poop. B and I even have conversations about it in bed these days.

Why has poop overtaken our lives? Well G’s bowels were underdeveloped when he was born and we have to be very cautious about how often he’s pooping. So not what I expected!

So we seem to count days between poppy diapers and make sure that he’s going often enough. I can’t say I enjoy counting the days or what’s required if he’s waited too long in between. But I do what’s best for Mr. G. 

For a couple who leaves the bathroom talk in the bathroom and always had, we talk about G’s bowel movements far too much. I’m sure he’ll love reading this when he’s older. Oh well. I’m happy to change poopy diapers if they come on their own, and occasionally send messages to our NICU nurses to let them know that he’s still doing okay, or when he’s decided to be particularly explosive the way he was in the hospital. 

He gave me a great Mother’s Day present today so I didn’t have to stimulate some poop out of him. Again – I know, not the most fun thing in the world. 

Here’s hoping that G’s bowels catch up in the next few months and we don’t have to worry about this much longer.

Disappointment

Today is Mother’s Day, my first one. It’s also babE Gray’s dedication at church. I’ve been looking forward to this day for years. Not just my first mother’s day but our child’s dedication at church. Almost 27 years ago, I was dedicated at our church, the first baby dedicated at our church just after it was founded. It’s my little claim to fame, but also a huge honour that they have kept the tradition. So today, for me at least, our church has come a full generation. The first baby dedicated is having her baby dedicated. Since we knew babE was on board we have been talking about this, and looking forward to it. 

So where does disappointment come in? Today is a day when we get to live out my family tradition, and today my dad is sitting in a hospital bed not able to come and watch. We have no idea how long my dad will be with us, and if he’ll be here to see Gray’s graduation from high school or university, or see him get married or have his own children. So today was the one thing that we knew he would be around for, to witness and take part in. So when my mom told me yesterday that my dad would still be in the hospital I was very disappointed. I know what really matters is that he continues to get healthy. It’s just a bit hard when I wonder if this is the only thing he might have been able to be present at.

We’re going to have a friend record the dedication and go and watch it with my dad later this week. I’m glad that we have the technology to be able to do that.

Well off to church we go. 

Happy Mother’s Day to all my blogging mommies, and all my readers. We appreciate the work you’re doing in your child’s life.

A New Adventure

So today we started a new adventure.

Cloth Diapers! 

We had decided long ago that cloth diapers were in our future, we just had to decide if we were going to do our own or use a local service. So after going through the numbers and comparing the work and financial aspect we decided that we could wash our own and save a bit more cash in the long run after having a few kids through diapers. 

The research started and we decided what brand we wanted to go with and registered for them at our local cloth diaper store. And as a surprise just before Christmas my sister showed up with a whole set of diapers for us. She had purchased the entire set of the smallest diapers we had registered for, including liners and covers. She’s such a blessing!

Well Gray arrived 2 months early and about 5lbs smaller than we anticipated, and 5lbs too small to use the diapers that were so graciously bought for us. So for the last 12 weeks we have be using disposable diapers. I’m not 100% against disposable diapers. They do have their place, like when we go to Mexico we’ll use disposables for the week, or up at the island where we don’t have access to our washer and dryer. But I prefer not to have so much waste especially the kind of waste produced by disposable diapers. I have had quite a few people comment that I’m ‘granola’ or crazy for wanting to do cloth, but I made a commitment to start my son’s life with the smallest carbon footprint that I could.

So since he’s way way way too small for the cloth diapers that we have, I decided to keep looking to see if there were some cloth diapers that were smaller. And I found them! Last night I went out and looked at some preemie/newborn diapers and they’re perfect. Gray is still wearing the newborn pampers and the tabs on them touch in the middle! He’s a very skinny boy. The investment we had made in disposable diapers in the last 6 weeks since we’ve been home from the hospital is less than the cost of the cloth diapers that will fit him now. I can only imagine how much more I would be spending on disposable diapers before he fits into the cloth diapers we already have when they’re bigger that the newborn disposables if the tabs aren’t touching. 

So here we are – all our goodies for cloth diapers. I still have to get some more covers; some of the ones we got didn’t fair to well in the dryer due to a flaw in the production. So we’re off to get some new ones tomorrow. 

And here is Mr. Bean in his first cloth diaper. He looks oh so cute! And way skinny in this photo.

Productive?!?!

During 12 weeks on bedrest I was able to be super productive during the days at home in bed. I would usually work my butt off during the mornings and get all my work done for the day by lunch and then nap, and after my nap respond to emails and still be done most everything by the time B got home from work. 

This has changed dramatically! 

During our time in the NICU I tried my hardest to get as much done as I could, and was very thankful for a boss that wasn’t too pushy while we were in the hospital and totally understood the days when I just couldn’t concentrate. As much as we ‘just sat around’ the NICU we really didn’t. We would be up every few minutes to keep G quiet or change a diaper, or rub his back or grab the nurse to reset his IV pump. It would take us two hours to get through a 40 minute episode of Lost some days. 

Well now we’re home and I’m back into work mode. At least I’m in work mode, Gray doesn’t seem to understand that I do have some work to do during the day. It hasn’t been easy to find a few moments to pop off some emails or put out fires. I feel super lucky that at the moment he’s actually upstairs sleeping in his crib for a bit. 

The problem comes when B gets home and makes me feel super guilty for having to do some work in the evenings because Gray hasn’t allowed me the time to work during the day. I love B to bits, but I hate that he makes me feel like crap when I have to do an hour of work, when he’ll come home and work all evening. I have no problem with him working in the evenings if he has to. 

Well back to get some work done before G wakes up. I can’t tell if that’s him waking up or just the wind rattling the trees and barbeque cover.

Perspective

I was at physio this week and my therapist commented that I seem so calm for a mom of a preemie. It’s not the first time someone has made a comment about our calmness or ease during this hard time. I know that if they had been through everything that we have been through since July 12^th they would understand our attitude; they would have a different perspective.

Our lives have been such a rollercoaster since we found out that Gray was going to be joining our family. At 21 weeks along I was put on bedrest praying that we would make it to 24 weeks. And then in the hospital at 29 weeks in preterm labour with the doctors sure that Gray would arrive that weekend and amazed that I was still pregnant a week later.

It’s not that I’ve been all sunshine and roses through all of this, but when I think of the alternatives, having a baby at 24 weeks, or 29 weeks or anywhere in between, the fact that Grayson decided to wait until 32 weeks changed a lot of what we had been prepared for by the medical team.

When we spent a week in Hamilton at 29 weeks the medical team there prepared us for what it would be like if Gray arrived then. That we would have to scrub up to our elbows and don gowns and masks and gloves in order to be able to enter the NICU. That we wouldn’t be able to hold him at first, he would be on a ventilator for possibly a few weeks. They gave us the worst case scenario. It was pretty scary but I had my husband and my family and I knew that we had a lot of support. And I had my faith, and I truly believe that we made it that far and Grayson would survive and thrive.

So after those few days, Grayson arriving at 32 weeks put us in a whole different place. When we went into labour at 32 weeks Hamilton didn’t have a bed for us because we were too far along and they had to save the bed for someone who wasn’t at 32 weeks yet. The hospital we spent 4 and a half weeks at didn’t have babies younger than Grayson unless they were transferred in from Sick Kids hospital once they were stable. We were in a completely different space then we were if Gray arrived at 29 weeks, physically and mentally. That doesn’t mean that we didn’t have any stress, and all our days were carefree. We just reminded ourselves, and the other parents reminded us to be thankful that G waited a bit longer. We had two sets of twins in our area that we born between 27 and 29 weeks, and had struggled. I saw the strength that they had and their parents had and if they could be strong and positive in their situation, I knew that I could as well.

My perspective now is so different then it was before. I’ve seen Gray go through some hard times. Being on a ventilator and having to have lumbar punctures, and lots and lots of blood work, and now I see him half sleeping on the couch while I type away. I know that Gray is a strong little man, and will fight through anything that comes up against him. Even sleep at the moment.

I think as an outsider looking in this journey could be really overwhelming, but just like any other journey we’re taking it day by day. I’m just choosing to be as calm as I can. From my perspective that’s the best thing I can do.