speaking of boogers...

thanks to sb reader nym: this is the manny picking his nose while holding the sweetest boy from feb 11.

new feature: parentblogging

i have been kicking around the idea of turning this into a blog about blogging about parentblogging

very post-modern, i know, but 10,000 blogs about kids and parenting are estimated to be created every day.

besides, what do bloggers like better than to explore their purpose on this planet? other than mucophagy, of course

custom mommyblogging tshirt

snapshirts scans your blog and makes a t-shirt out of it. a pretty sweet idea

(for those using blogger) it scans the bar at the top so words like "flag objectionable content" will be included until you take them out or replace them

The great (size three) diaper test!

the sweetest boy is quickly becoming a giant and needs a new diaper. the best diaper he has been using when not in cloth is pampers swaddlers. they only go up to size two. gasp!

swaddlers appeal is all about the stretchy side tabs. they fit and grow with boy, hold everything in, and generally resemble a pair of human underpants.

we bought a brick of every type of diaper, eight in all. here are the results, as the sweetest boy tested them with various fluids and semisolids, ranking in order of worst to best:


only if it was the last diaper on earth, honey:
pampers baby dry-like trying to use a piece of loose leaf paper as a diaper. no stretchyness whatsoever. nowhere.your child will end up with plenty of damp, yellow-stained clothes. 25 cents per diaper.


cheap - and performs that way:
target brand- weird tissue paper tabs flap out to the side of each leg like strange wings. minor elastic along the back, zero on side tabs. scratchy and noisy. pity the poor baby's rump.however, price is appealing at 14 cents per diaper


albertsons brand- looks identical, feels identical, sucks just as much, and for identical reasons. 15 cents per diaper





known brand, pricey, and not that good:
huggies baby shaped fit- on sale (buy $99 get a $30 gift certificate) -has elastic band going all the way across to *trick* parents into thinking there is stretchyness. actually the elastic is quite brittle by the side tabs. 25 cents each

huggies supreme- on sale (buy $99 get a $30 gift certificate) short tabs with an underwhelming stretch factor. an excess of elastic by the leg, three leg gussets. they don't fit well. (after all that baby shaped fit marketing!) very thick. I get the impression that Huggies just doesn't get it. 27 cents each


two worth checking out:
pampers cruisers-the premium pampers line- very stretchy side tabs-quiet but not all that soft compared to swaddlers. 27 cents each




kirkland- stretchy in the back and side tabs. not as stretchy as swaddlers on side tabs but the back is extremely elastic. side tabs will tear if handled too roughly. feels thick. 16 cent/diaper



THE EXTENDED TEST:
boy wore pampers cruisers and kirkland.

the cruisers are all around good diaper, fit, comfort, blowout resistant. another benefit is that they are sold in any store in a range of sizes. the only negative is the high price at .27 each

kirklands are comparable in fit, comfort and resistance. they are only sold in a box of 182 and only at costco, which would be a negative if he was close to outgrowing the size. they get a bit hard once wet, and the fragrance seems to be industrial strength because it caused some diaper rash on the sweetest boy's bottom. the price is the lure of the kirklands at .16 each

the B was exhausted and a bit perplexed from so many successive diaper changes!

lactivism merchandise: it's nipple lickin' good

clever, appealing, repulsive, in your face, lovable, all depending on your orientation: the lactivist offers bibs, tees and onesies with some interesting slogans. to name a few:



nip/suck
open mouth insert nipple
eat at moms
boob man
i'm no weaner

more on the SIDS thing

sb reader mom101 steered me to an interesting new zealand study regarding conventional mattress offgassing and SIDS. [they call it crib death over there, g'day mate]

according to the study mattresses release toxic gas when a common fungus reacts with the chemicals inside a mattress.

These heavier-than-air gases are concentrated in a thin layer on the baby's mattress or are diffused away and dissipated into the surrounding atmosphere. If a baby breathes or absorbs a lethal dose of the gases, the central nervous system shuts down, stopping breathing and then heart function. These gases can fatally poison a baby, without waking the sleeping baby and without any struggle by the baby.

i find this theory believable b/c one of the first things i intuitively wanted for our own bed where the sweetest boy would sleep was a good mattress cover to protect him and the mattress from each other.

casting doubt on SIDS

the manny says i should blog about this: neither of us believe in SIDS

SIDS is sudden infant death syndrome, all kids of definitions can be found out there

there are more than a few skeptics. says Dr. Mason:

Pediatricians may have been making a tragic mistake all these years. Waneta Hoyt was convicted of five counts of murder in 1995 for the deaths of her children. Dr. Jerold Lucey, editor of Pediatrics in 1972, now states, "We should never have published this article. . . . [S]ome physicians still believe SIDS runs in families. It doesn't—murder does." Some new studies estimate that 5-30% of SIDS cases are actually homicides. Because of the sporadic nature of SIDS, I doubt that anyone will ever know how many SIDS cases are actually more sinister.

But most skeptics like Roy Meadow link some cases of SIDS directly to murder. (it is too weird to get into here, but basically he said that parents would kill their babies for the attention and sympathy of the medical community aka MSbP)

The manny and i do not go that far, not even close. but as pretty dedicated attachment parents, we think that neglect, baby training and sheer ignorance is enough to kill a child.

example #1 (ignorance): the lactation consultant at my hospital says a number of new parents wonder why their newborns aren't gaining weight even though he/she has been taking three meals a day. newborns need 8-10 meals because their stomachs are so small. they will starve with so few meals.

example #2 (baby training) Ferberization, where a baby is left to "cry it out" is a widely applied parenting strategy, never mind that it has been recanted. it is also laregly misunderstood as an approach that advocates leaving the baby alone for longer and longer periods of time at night, regardless of their reaction, at any age. combine this with daytime parenting beliefs that holding a baby will somehow hurt or spoil it, and that doesn't leave any window for real human interaction between parent and child. i think that if my early days were this way, i would choose to die. doctors show that something changes in the brain of a SIDS victim that is visible by autopsy. maybe they have willed their own death because their lives are so miserably alone.

example #3(neglect) SIDS has been cut by 50% by having babies sleep on their back, so obviously suffocation has been a factor. next to go: those big padded crib bumpers...

i hope i get some comments on this

(close to) senior citizen is new mom

aieeeee
a 62 year old mom gave birth to a healthy baby this week

technical difficulties

the cat destroyed my blogging ability by knocking the computer off the table. no more posts until this here power adapterarrives

asking the experts

mommymatic had an interesting post on asking the sleep experts the real questions- not the dubya-style republicans only in the town hall meeting- style ones presented in the books.

the best: Dear Dr. Sears: During the time you were raising your 8 children, when, exactly, did you get to have sex?

or mine: dear dr sears-do you offer anything to physically remove my lactating breast to give to the manny after he has woken up the sweetest boy in the middle of the night? that way he can stay up all night feeding him instead of me.