Baby Wipes

Dan, Ben, Tim, and I all have checkups this week. So far, all the boys look healthy. Dan had to get four shots. Now he hobbles around the house and fusses a lot. Not fun for any of us. He DID sleep in his own bed all night, though, which was fabulous for me--except that Ben wanted to eat every hour and a half instead of every three hours last night, so I didn't really get to sleep better. Oh well.

Anyway, I showed the doctor Ben's cherry-red bum and said, "None of my other kids looked like this...." except for the yeast infection on the leg-creases, which they all had. She said, "Stop using baby wipes." I guess any little rash, when wiped with baby wipes, becomes a huge big nasty deal. The kids had just used all the rest of the baby wipes on themselves (arms and feet, and a few windows and walls), so I had just switched back to my mainstay: wet paper towels. Within 24 hours, the cherry red was gone, and Ben stopped crying during all diaper changes. I guess I was right all these years when I said, "I don't like to put chemicals on my baby's bums." The doctor also said, "Switch diaper brands. Most people don't have any trouble with the cheap diapers--only the expensive ones seem to cause rashes." This is the second doctor's office I've heard say Don't Use Wipes if your baby gets rashy.

So being poor maybe is actually better for the kids--I can't afford wipes or expensive diapers, and it turns out they're not good for sensitive skin anyway. Same with laundry soap--I buy the cheapest kind and use ammonia in the water (gets the clothes cleaner than Tide), which, coincidentally, has no dyes or smells that stick to the clothes. When we switched to church-brand detergent, Dan got eczema from it! And we buy Jergen's soap because it's cheap, but I had a nurse tell us once that only ivory and jergens are safe for baby's sensitive skin--if you use anything else, you have to buy separate soap for babies. And, in fact, I'm allergic to both dial and church-brand soap.

Anyway, I'm down to my "regular" weight (still 10 lbs over the top "healthy weight" for my height) so I pulled out my normal "big size" clothes--and they fit! That was fast. Unfortunately, I looked in the mirror and didn't much like my profile, so I'm going to go to my post-nursing diet right away: no candy, drink mostly water instead of sugar, eat carbs with protein, and all sweets are okay IF they're home made and I eat something good for me first. I crave carbs when I'm nursing, so we'll see how this goes. Eventually I'll add pilates back to the list, too, since I lost 6 inches around my middle in 3 months last time I was diligent at it.

Despite being motivated by vanity, the goal really is to get my body in shape enough that I can carry yet another pregnancy off. I figure I have 18 months to do whatever I'm going to do for my health, and then we start over again...