Monday, September 27, 2010

Cloth Diaper Confusion

I've been trying to avoid bombarding all of you readers with all things baby-related, but this has been and will always be my place to ramble about all things, so for all of you that are not interested, you can just skip over any post that is just too "baby" for you. After all, this is about Mr and Mrs M, and really little peanut is forefront in our brains all the time!

I've always been intrigued with the idea of cloth diapering, long before we were actually pregnant. I liked the idea of saving tons of garbage sitting in a landfill for hundreds of years, and saving our bank accounts hundreds of dollars (on average about $1000-1500) over the diapering life of our little peanut. After all if my mother could cloth diaper two of her three daughters with old-school prefolds and diaper pins, and a ringer washing machine, then with all the almost high-tech by comparison cloth diapers now I was sure to be able to manage right? Not to mention, I own a modern washing machine, so I can dump the laundry and go!

There are just so many options out there! And although we will be saving ourselves a ton over the course of a couple years, we will have to put out a large chunk of change as an investment in order to be able to make this venture work! I also wanted something user-friendly if you will so Andre will have no excuses about not changing a diaper. I quickly figured out that this involved some research. Thankfully I have friends both in real life and online that have been cloth diapering their little one's so I have been asking questions, and visiting websites that they have suggested. I've also been doing comparison shopping, trying to find the cheapest price on my favourite cloth diaper so far, BumGenius.

I have also been researching cloth diaper samplers, basically a collection of whatever type of cloth diaper you have chosen, in different brands so you can choose what diaper works best for you and your little one. The best part is that I've found a company that is Canadian (yeah!) and only about 45 minutes away that offers this, so I have bookmarked their site to save for this spring. Who knew that finding something to cover a baby's bottom would be so confusing!

Good-Bye Summer...

...hello Fall!

Otherwise known as my favourite season of the entire year. There's just something about having to break out the sweaters, and jackets, the freshness in the air, and the rich colours all around. I love getting out the cozy blankets that can be snuggled under in the evenings, and warm duvets to curl up under all night.

Just this week I brought out a spicy vanilla candle and let the whole house smell super yummy. Today on the agenda was breaking out the duvet for the winter. I think it will still be a little too early for me at least since peanut seems to be keeping me fairly warm while sleeping at night. I'm sure Andre will appreciate the extra warmth though.

We're getting ready for Thanksgiving around here as well. Last year Andre and I were holiday-dinner-hosting-dynamos after hosting Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter, but this year Thanksgiving will be the extent of our hosting duties. I'm not a fan of hosting Christmas dinner, and will never do this again, and I will be too busy with a newborn to host Easter dinner this year. My mom has agreed to take over the hosting reins once again for these holidays. We also got news that we will be having house guests this fall! My friend Laura and her little girl joined us for a few days this summer, and she asked if we would be willing to offer them our guestroom for a few days again this fall. We're looking forward to it!

We've also been busy researching and planning all the things that will need to be purchased for our little peanut! For updates on all things baby related you can visit our baby blog at: http://ourlittleonemcg.blogspot.com/

Thursday, September 16, 2010

The Journey

I don't know why I was reminded of this yesterday while at work of all places. But I was and figured maybe I thought about it because I was meant to write about it and share it with someone out there who needs to hear it. Who knows, it could just be the hormones talking!

So when Andre and I were going through treatments I all but stopped going to church. I couldn't do it. Couldn't handle seeing all the families. All the new babies. All the families that were blessed, when I thought that somehow God had it out for Andre and I. Going through Infertility is hard. It tests your faith, your marriage, the very core of everything you thought you ever wanted out of life. Needless to say church was too hard. For some during the hard times they are drawn to church, for me, I feel pushed away.

Since finding out we were blessed with this incredible miracle, (Yes, even though we used modern technology to get pregnant, it makes it no less of a miracle for happening.) we have slowly started going back to church. Some days are really easy, others a little harder.

In our church the ministers usually take the whole month of July off for vacation. We went a few times in July, then we went back again the first Sunday the ministerial team (a husband and wife) were back from vacation. I honestly believe that I was meant to be in church that day, to hear the children's story of all things. That Sunday there was not one child in the place. Go figure, they didn't want to be sweating in church! The minister still did the children's story. He said it was for "the big kids".

Him and his wife had gone to Southampton that year to go cottaging. He showed a picture on the big screen of his wife standing near a beach fence with an expanse of sand and water behind her. He talked about how the sand was so hot that year. How when you walked over the sand to get to the water you kind of bounced from foot to burning foot, kind of howling. All the while getting closer and closer to the nice, cool water. He talked about that journey to the water. How painful and long it seemed in that moment, but how once you got to the water, it didn't seem to matter. In fact, once you got there you would totally do it again in a second. In the end, it didn't matter how hard and painful the journey was, it was always worth it in the end.

The tears started. I couldn't help it. Hell, now that I'm typing it out the tears are coming again! I couldn't help but think of every failed cycle. Every follie check when the tech would tell me how none of my follies were growing. I thought of every needle during that last cycle, along with all those follie checks at the beginning when nothing was happening but I was told to keep going.

Then I thought of the day when we finally had one little follie. It was freaking amazing. I then thought about that morning when I saw those fainter than faint lines, then the next morning when I saw those words that I had been dying to see.

In the end yes, our journey was hard. I know that there are some out there that have gone, and are going through worse. But don't lose faith, even though it is so easy to lose faith. Yes the journey is hard, but the end, the end is worth it.