Cloth diapers at 15 months

Can you believe Little Monster is now 15 months old? It's just insane how fast she is getting big. Tonight she said "uh-oh" after she had been crying and I about died laughing. When she is crying we say "uh oh! Did you fall?" and I guess she learned that's what you way when you cry.

So. Many bloggers I read have mentioned cloth diapering. Here's a really nice summary post (that links to other posts on the topic) if you haven't read a similar post. Actually I really found this one helpful too. Over the years I've read many other cloth diaper posts in this vein all over the place.

Brief disclaimer: I do not care one bit whether you use cloth diapers or not, it's all good. Life happens and we do what works for us. I do not expect anyone to be insane and do things my way because it often feels like an eternally uphill battle in many respects. We chose cloth diapers because we are broke most of the time and overall the cost is much lower to do cloth (in dollars and because we are failures at taking out the trash so we need to reduce our trash production wherever possible).

The thing other people haven't written about is using prefolds instead of all in one or pocket diapers. That's something we are doing that is pretty unusual (maybe?) so I thought I'd talk about it (plus I'm in a gloomy mood so I'm hoping it will at least be a break from my grumbling gloom that I hope will go away soon).

Here are the questions I have heard or not heard but seem implied from folks and our answers (along with some pictures because why not?).

How are prefolds different from diapers my grandma used?

What makes them prefolded is the number of layers of cotton. Back in the day, diapers were one thickness (and all cloth obviously) and you needed to fold a bunch to get more bulk where you needed it. Now the diapers are made with a middle third that is double the thickness of the edges so fewer folds are needed or none depending on how you attach them to the baby.

Why would you pick prefolds instead of all in one diapers?

For us the reasoning was twofold. One, it's easier for us to not add a step to the end of laundry like stuffing pocket diapers or even putting away all in one diapers. We get busy, laundry gets left in a basket for a week, and prefolds are easy to grab from the basket, fold in thirds, and stick into a cover. Two is the advantage of each part wearing separately and being able to be laundered in a way that makes it last the longest. We wash diapers in a warm short cycle (this is mostly a rinse) and then a hot wash while the covers only get washed warm with other baby clothes (and the liners too, then they go for another hot wash after the other clothes and covers are removed). This means covers last longer and diapers that wear out or are damaged can be tossed out while we keep the cover. A bonus we discovered is the cleaning power of a cloth diaper. We use them for spills on the carpet, as burp rags for tiny humans, to dust, for potty training incidents, all over the house. It's really handy to know that we have that level of absorbency handy for cleaning up.

Don't all those diapers stink? I don't think I could handle the smell.

I gag every time I wash diapers and throw up on occasion. I gag a lot when I change a poopy diaper so I am not representative of someone who tolerates stink very well. However, we do a few things to cut down the smell. We have soiled diapers in a trash can with a foot pedal, soiled baby clothes and diaper liners and used wipes in a mesh wire basket on the counter because they smell very little. We add baking soda to the diaper pail when it gets smelly and it gets washed out periodically too. When we leave home we use wet bags and the smell is pretty well contained in them.

How do you get them clean? Aren't they really icky?
We use Rockin Green laundry soap and never bleach them, warm rinse with a dash of soap and hot wash with a full dose of soap, and they either go on the line or in the dryer. Our dryer is geriatric so they get dried on low because anything hotter and it overheats and won't work for a week and the repair human who fixed it up last time it quit heating said it's at a high risk of starting on fire at any moment if we use the high heat. Sometimes we dry the diapers twice on low so they are really dry. The covers we turn inside out (well, flip inside out) and put into the warm wash and they generally come clean in only one load.

When it's sunny we dry the diapers on the line. One drying rack holds about 2 dozen large size prefolds or 3 dozen of the small ones. In the winter it took 3-5 sunny days to whiten the diapers but in the summer one afternoon gets out most stains. I discovered recently that clothespins fit right over the rods on the drying racks so that saves some time hanging them up. Here's my laundry assistant demonstrating that her big sister's mini golf set needs to have a hole inside the drying rack.

You can see we have another very short drying rack in silver in addition to the main white one. That's the one we got when the kid was a baby and after umpteen moves, its legs vanished. When stretched it holds 3 dozen large prefolds if it has its legs. Now it holds about a dozen at most but it's my overflow. I think we have between 3 and 4 dozen diapers in circulation. We bought 1 dozen new and 2 dozen used ones retired from the local cloth diaper service and there are some strays from the kid's babyhood around but not nearly as many as I'd thought. I assume I'll discover a box of cloth diapers about the time Little Monster is potty trained since so many things are missing and have yet to be found. 3 dozen would be plenty and it's kind of risky to have so many diapers because we can go too long between washes and still have diapers.

I tried cloth diapers, those all in one things with all the snaps, and I hated them so I sold the lot.

Aside from the diaper portion being a factor in choosing prefolds, the closure for the diapers was a major factor as well. One of us adults has moderate limitations to manual dexterity which makes snaps very difficult. I don't think an all in one diaper exists that comes with the loop and hook closure (ve.lcro is a trade name for this stuff). Combining a hard time getting snaps to work with a squirmy kicking baby just seemed like a bad idea to us so we didn't.

Isn't it a pain in the neck having all those parts to keep track of?

Maybe yes, mostly no. We do covers, trifold the diaper to fit in the cover, add a fleece liner, and attach the diaper to the baby. If we used all in ones, we'd only lose one piece to that trio. It isn't that much effort and only nominally less than if we did all in ones, plus we don't need to worry about doublers or adding special pieces to the all in one.

What about diaper creams? How does that work?

Little Monster has mild eczema and she needs lotion or creams of some sort about 3 weeks a month to keep it in check and stop her from scratching until she bleeds. We started off thinking rashes would be rare and we could just put her in disposables for a day or two while we used the cream but now we've gotten some fleece from a craft store and chopped it into liners that we use with each diaper change.

Wait... what do you use for wipes?

Washcloths. Specifically we bought a big pack of them meant for washing your car at a price of about 40 cents apiece. As they get destroyed by being laundered often we just toss them. I think we started with about 6 dozen and we're down to maybe 4 dozen now (some barely lasted 1 wash though). We also have some plain white washcloths in the mix too but most were the kid's during her diaper years. Many people get all excited about some fancy wipes solution but we don't do that at all. Just plain water for us and so far it works well. Both girls get a rash from aloe so we are cautious about products we put on their skin and try to keep it to a minimum. We have an insulated water pump deal like this except in a really amazing plaid pattern for when the diaper station isn't in the laundry room with a sink like it is now so water is always handy.

What about bleaching or yeast infections?

Some all in ones have in their cleaning directions to bleach them sometimes but that's more because the cover makes it hard or impossible to get the sewn-in liner clean all the way. That's a benefit to prefolds. Unless you do something awful to them like forget to wash them before a week long vacation, there's no need to bleach them probably. If Little Monster is having trouble with a yeast infection we iron the diapers with a very hot iron and lots of steam and that helps quiet things down. Heat kills the nasty yeasts so some folks also use really hot wash water. Our diapers already get washed in water hot enough to kill most yeast so the iron seals the deal (plus obviously the dryer never gets all that hot).

What kind of covers do you like?

We have a variety of covers. Little Monster is a long body baby and relatively narrow as babies go, plus she's in the 25th percentile so she's a petite baby. I imagine some covers that don't work wonderfully for us would be better on a differently shaped baby. We mostly have Thirsties (no affiliate links, I'm much too lazy for that) and Flip covers. We had intended to just get Thirsties but the cloth diaper store was out and some Flips were on clearance so we got some and I think I like them better. Thirsties have the double leg gusset that my spouse likes but I find the inner elastic is worn out now. They also come in size 1 and size 2 so higher cost overall than the Flip that in theory fits all along. We got our first Flip cover about 6 months ago so I can't speak to how it would fit a newborn but my bet is not as well as the Thirsties size 1 did. Despite weighing not much more than 20 lbs Little Monster needs the tallest size in both covers now so I'm unsure they will last her tall body to potty training, but then maybe they will. She's still pretty near the narrowest on all her covers as well. We also have a Sweet Pea all in one cover that is just not at all the right cut for Little Monster so we rarely use it, and a single all in one diaper that I like pretty well and would consider having more of despite the snaps. In the legacy diaper cover category we have a few Bummis covers that are much less awesome than the current models but that got the job done well enough. They were the small size and are outgrown now and we didn't buy any more but not for any special reason beyond sales and easy availability. Somewhere we have the full set of barely-used mediums from the kid's toddlerhood but due to need those may just stay lost.

If you had unlimited money and were just starting out with cloth diapers, what would you suggest?

I really like the multipurpose prefolds so I'd say go with those and pick some cute covers. We've convinced 5 different in-home daycares to use them if they have the hook and loop closure. I prefer the hook and loop closure but I bet the snaps last longer so might be better if you are planning for many children. I would suggest a few different covers to start with (say 4 but maybe 4 different varieties or brands), 3 dozen of the small prefold diapers plus 1 dozen large ones and you can add the other 2 dozen larges and another 2-6 covers over the first few months of babyhood as the budget allows. We have to have at least 8 covers because at daycare each cover is used once and that gives us 2 days' worth of covers if we are behind on laundry. I'd suggest either a big wet bag or a cheap foot pedal trashcan to store soiled diapers and a little one for soiled covers.

Scars

I had a skin biopsy a few weeks or months or something ago. In pharmacy school time, it is recent enough that I don't have a scar yet but not so distant as to have been last semester or even before midterms and that's as close as I can pinpoint the event.

Anyway.

Since the stitches went in, a scar has been forming. I have had this same size biopsy a few times now on various patches of skin and I somehow hadn't noticed the time from stitches to scar so acutely as I have now. This scar has been taking way too long to form, I thought.

In the first week while I waited for the stitches to come out I was sure it was infected. It burned, it ached, it bugged me, it woke me up (or other things woke me up and once I was awake I was very bothered by it).  I was sure something must be wrong in how long it was taking to heal. It oozed and all that stuff. I was out of sorts. I went in to have it inspected and it was deemed perfect. The creepy unhealed mess that it was, that was perfect and exactly how it was meant to be at that stage of healing, according to someone who knows what's what after having seen oodles of these.

Lately I've been thinking about where I expected to be now and where I am and if it matters that my expectations were wildly wrong. One of my professors has mentioned to me or us several times about "over the last 3 years" in pharmacy school and stuff about how I finished a requirement (that requires reflection afterward of course) in my first two years so I didn't do anything to meet it this year and it is bugging me. It just grated on my last nerve so much that my bonus year gets glossed over. I didn't finish that requirement in my first two years of school, it took me the full three but here I am at the end of the third year of school after four years. It's also that it isn't just me that it grates when people gloss over the extra time. I think it's about 15% of my class who started with me and is starting rotations soon. It feels rude to me that we get ignored as a group. The dean's pep talk included a "did you imagine you'd be here 3 years ago? Did you think you'd make it? It all goes so fast!" section and I was tempted to walk out. 3 years ago? I thought I'd be somewhere very different than this. I thought I'd get lucky and have the perfectly timed after 2nd year baby and then graduate and have a job and a 2 year old and a 6 year old. Here and now? No job, no 2 year old, no graduation, just a funk where I feel like a screw up.

Anyway, I think that most of what's broken in me is my expectations and that I'm disappointed that life isn't meeting them. I get gut punched when I see someone with the middle child we don't have. It stings a lot when my classmates are having second children during pharmacy school or just after. One classmate has the almost 2 year old we'd have if pregnancy 4 had gone well (perfectly timed for summer break of course) and will have another in the next couple of months, that elusive 2 year spacing I always thought would be ideal. I had thought that I'd have a job now and be studying for board exams and going somewhere. Instead I'm getting ready for my rotations and spending a lot of time away from home. I suppose I just have the itch for change since such big changes were in the plan originally but are delayed some more now. Limbo is a lonely place to be and the bonus year of school has in many ways been one of limbo.

But that pesky new scar that's slowly forming on my arm reminds me that just because I think things should move at some speed doesn't mean they will or that they ought to. I bet if someone had seen thousands of cases of expectations and plans dashed they'd say that sometimes it works out better to have the delay. It is entirely possible that I am impatient and things are moving along at just the right speed. It might even be probable that everything is fine in the big picture and I will get where I ought to be only this way. I'm really looking forward to the scars of pharmacy school healing completely so I can get back to my life or I settle down enough to realize there is no destination to life, that it's all a journey to somewhere we will probably never recognize. Hopefully this year of rotations is that opportunity.

Ends yet again

I realized today that it's been a week since Little Monster nursed and that means we are done. If I'd realized it at the time I imagine I'd have been nostalgic a little bit but since it was 30 seconds of chomping and then giggling, I was mostly just DONE. On the one hand, given how much I disliked the whole thing, whoa making it to 14 months was pretty spectacular. I had so much frozen milk that I stopped pumping in January for daycare and she didn't switch to store-bought milk until 13 months so that was incredibly freeing. Up until that last time I decided that with the biting/yanking/causing bleeding I'd stop offering and if she wanted to request to nurse, she could bring me her nursing pillow (ok, so it's a polar bear stuffed animal). I turned her down once since then and she was grouchy but she's also getting like 5 teeth all at once. It's so sweet of her to save teething for when I have high stakes school stuff coming up, isn't it? (extreme sarcasm)

My first final is within the week (they are strung out to torture us this semester). Life as we have known it for so many years is really going to end.

It's a very weird set of emotions that's all wandering around my head these past few days, part relief that at long last there will be no more "I'm going to the library for the night" or "No I can't play right now, I have a test tomorrow" and part terror that I have no idea how we will cope with the new world. It of course doesn't help that we are buffering school and real world with a year of extreme wackiness where I'm gone lots and terrible twos (pre-twos?) and new label management that comes with getting an appropriate IEP and so far with one special ed teacher I'd like to fire. Seriously it's been a week with the label and we aren't going to disclose everything to you in an email because we aren't stupid. No need to be rude and disparaging and suggest that the kid won't even qualify for an IEP (and how could you know that anyway, fool?).

The time left in school and with a baby who really is more toddler every hour is so short it is mind-boggling. It has seemed through all of pharmacy school as if it were never-ending and with the bonus year, that's certainly felt more and more true up until just this week. Now there is hardly enough time to get everything ready. I've ordered my work clothes to fill in my wardrobe. I've bought myself a rice cooker and will probably buy some jars for lunches tonight. My travel plans for the first two rotations are reasonably firmed up. Since it works out that I go straight from school Friday until noon (drive for hours between) to my sibling's wedding (SQUEE!) and my first rotation the day after the wedding, my time to prepare is really short. Startlingly short.

My very first na.plex review book came yesterday (that's one of the two exams we take to get licensed, the other one being the state-specific law exam). I was cheap and bought last year's edition since I'll want the newest information to study for the real thing next year. I haven't actually gotten it out of the packaging yet. So far it's sitting where I can kick it around but studying for my exit exams starts Friday afternoon (and the exam is way too soon so I'm counting on being able to fail once so I get to study for it before the retake).

I think for now I'm going to make a list of everything that is left in the semester and another that's everything to get ready for rotations. Hopefully they are similar in length and not terrifying. After I finish the assignment due at midnight and the very last freaking paper I'm ever writing in pharmacy school that's due tomorrow. And maybe after I sleep some since I have a quiz and a zillion doctor appointments tomorrow with big things the rest of the week too. Siiiiiigh.

The d word

That would be disclosure, in case you were wondering.

I'm finding myself in this interesting space where I'd like to write about something very profound happening in my life but it would make me way too identifiable. So let's tiptoe around it for a bit, shall we?

For a long time we have been trying to figure out what the deal with the kid is. She is a very quirky kid. Now we have a relatively neat answer and a label and that's exciting and terrifying. At this point it's hard to know if the label will stick but it seems like we just discovered the label had been attached to her all along and it was discovered rather than attached externally so I'm pretty comfortable with it overall. The label's big reveal is very helpful to me in how I approach parenting in that I know I'm not doing anything wrong but that what I know to do is based on a label-free child and that's not who I am parenting so my approach needs altering. It isn't that the everything we have tried was done wrong by us but that what we needed wasn't in the realm of normal "everything."

So to whom do we disclose this information? Does it matter? Should we be thinking about how a label changes the way she is perceived or is it inherently wrong to withhold information from those who might benefit from it?

Last night the spouse and I watched the movie Gataca (why yes I spelled that wrong) about a future where selection of specific genes is normal before a child is created via something like IVF. A lot of it boils down to how we discriminate against those with a certain label, whether that label is one that's visually apparent to everyone or one that is revealed by a test. The lead character really wants to be an astronaut but his genetic probability at birth says his life expectancy is only to 30 and he will have "a heart condition." He proves that he is mentally very capable despite that doom and gloom prediction of his odds of success in life as a baby. The genetic counseling session where the parents with the unordered baby protagonist in tow is really intriguing as the parents choose just how much they want to control the genetic probability of various risks.

But our world isn't just going to be like that if it changes and we order babies off a menu. It's like that now. Men and women get a different number of calls for job interviews, mentoring opportunities, and promotions with identical resumes. People with an "ethnic" name get discriminated against like there's no tomorrow (who gets called back about an apartment or a job or even the micro-aggression of having to explain where you are from to every person you meet). Fat people get their health concerns blown off and are told to lose weight as the sole solution to every problem. I got told my migraines would get better if I lost 20 lbs by a migraine specialist for example. They didn't of course.

To some degree we are people and we have to weed out people who are helpful from people who are harmful so discrimination is in our nature. I think that degree is tiny compared to the way we've structured society though. Look at who is in power and who isn't. There's a line and only a very certain set of people get to cross it. We all lose because of this narrow control of power.

So I am struggling with disclosing this label. How does the label move what people think about my kid, about my parenting of her? When do we tell her about the label? We have an appointment to look at this with her primary doctor next week and it's hard to know if she's old enough to know about the label yet, and if telling her does more harm than good, and if we should bring her to the appointment and involve her or if we should let her continue being her without the label wandering around in her psyche.

That of course is the heart of the matter - disclosure. Do we disclose what we know to her now and if not now, when? What's the age where the label will be something she can understand completely?

And who else do we let in on the label? Primary caregivers only or do we wait to see if she struggles and then clue in the primary caregivers? Teachers? We decided to see about what the school district has to offer so that cat is probably out of the bag but we need to know our options and figure out if labeled schooling matters or if she can succeed somewhere with no label beyond her name.

Transitions of care

My goal for the year was to be good and put my own mask on first. It's a reasonable goal I think, prioritizing self care over draining myself caring for others.

Of course, it hasn't happened that way as much as I'd like to. I have suddenly taken over a huge amount of childcare and household stuff and that's life and was pretty unavoidable. On the other hand I've been decent about maintaining my sanity by getting out of the house sometimes, better than ever before. It has been really good to get out to be an adult sometimes. I honestly am happy to lose 5% of my grade in some classes to have the time to be human and not just a studying machine.

But here we are, getting ready to transition from me doing lots and lots to me being gone during the week. When I was away for school in the fall I came home to a disaster area and it really bothered me. I worry. I don't want to come home every weekend and spend all my time doing dishes and laundry, but if every week is like that one, I will have no other choice. I can't in good conscience leave for the week if every dish is dirty and none of the laundry is clean.

In the healthcare arena we talk a lot about transitions of care. Lots of bad things happen when people go from the hospital back home or to a different healthcare facility. It's easy to drop the ball when someone has been providing one level of care and it's suddenly gone. The new caregiver may have no idea what is needed to maintain adequate care. I think of the little old man with heart failure who goes to the hospital, stays a few days, then gets sent home on a few new medications whose little old life partner is bewildered by the whole thing. Which medications he took before the hospital should he still take? Did the dose of any of them change? What looks so bad that he needs to go back to the hospital and what should we call the doctor about? How much do all these new medications cost? What happens if he dies? What happens if I get sick? These guys come back to the hospital  pretty often because they haven't been taking medications properly and it's easy to get confused even if you are a very with-it caregiver. I've seen the little old caregiver in the pharmacy and they just look like they are in total shock. They nod and say they understand and sometimes can even repeat directions back but I don't think most of them have really understood a word of what is said.

Now we all in healthcare are looking at ways to smooth transitions of care for people so don't think we've given up on the little old caregivers completely. We do things like create detailed lists of medications and send home swaths of printed information about how things should go. We sometimes send home med lists that say specifically "stop taking medication x that you took before you were in the hospital" even. Discharge counseling for those leaving the hospital is far more than it used to be so hopefully the sick person and the caregiver(s) understand better how things work.

But sometimes no matter how prepared you pretend you are, you can't really fathom an experience with radical change.

I've been trying to ease the upcoming transition of care for my spouse, spelling out things that matter like that we need to do one load of laundry every day to keep up with things. I've been letting the mess pile up so hopefully my spouse recognizes it and deals with it without prompting. This means that a bowl that got smashed in the kitchen a week ago (by my spouse no less) is still in pieces on the floor.

I'm starting to panic honestly. I know that my rotations are what's best for my career and we as a family are in a place where it looks like it will be my career and not our careers. I get that it matters a lot that I do the rotations to the best of my ability. It's part of me putting on my own mask first. At the same time I can't believe I am really going to be gone for 10 weeks in a row. I have no idea how this is going to work. I'm scared to see how it works and that it really isn't going to work at all.

Next is my short to do list. Let me know what I've forgotten.

Figure out what dishes/pans I need to feed myself while I'm away and acquire them
Assemble work wardrobe and purchase anything I need to fill it out (new undergarments for sure, probably a few pairs of pants)
Get a proper pair of pajamas
Clean out the car
Get the car's body work done so it's presentable
Figure out the site requirements and get those accomplished before each rotation
Avoid panic if at all possible

Questions for you all: how many outfits/pieces are in your work wardrobe?

Privilege

So I sit in a place of privilege. I am very acutely aware of that and I think it's important for us white folk to recognize it and if we can, squash those who attempt to give us privileges over others around us.

It's an interesting place, seeing how privileged I am and seeing how little those around me see it. I guess it mostly makes me uncomfortable that I wind up in a place to call people on it and it's no fun to be someone who is interrupting things all the time to point out how we are excluding others.

Let's start with t-ball. I know the demographics of our town very well for a variety of reasons, and it mirrors national demographics with our young people mirroring where the US is predicted to be in 10 years with non-white kids being a slight majority and with Hispanic folk being the most numerous group.

My kid's t-ball league had 2 Hispanic kids and maybe 3 other non-white kids from multi-racial families (from what I could tell, it isn't like I met any parents I didn't already know attending t-ball twice a week for 8 weeks). 7 teams of about 15 kids each and that's it. So I was thinking about why that is exactly. Then it dawned on me that second shift was probably to blame. The major employers in town have at least 2 full shifts and sometimes run a pretty full third shift as well. I just bet that non-white folk work disproportionately not first shift, whether that's because they need the extra pay (if there is any?) and I also bet the white folks know a guy who can get them on the day shift. I also suspect that not all Hispanic folks stay in town for years to get seniority to get onto the day shift. If you work second shift, no way you could get your child to evening t-ball. T-ball did cut across classes with kids of doctors and executives and folks with very blue collar jobs playing on the same teams.

Then there's the La Leche League meetings. It gives me this super guilty feeling to attend these because the extreme whiteness and extreme upper to middle class environment kinda makes me gag. I like it because it's nice to talk about nursing and children and cloth diapers without anyone giving you the side eye because nobody but the lucky few have time for discussing any of that, let alone doing it. I hate it because a discussion of how awesome raw milk is doesn't get squashed and it turns out lots of people are all "wahoo! raw milk!" (hint: it is dangerous so do not think there is any way to make it safe, I promise I read the primary literature and looked at the data and just say no) and the levels of middle class and upper class signaling are staggering. The designer diaper bags and fancy toys and even designer labeled kid clothes just rub it in my face that I am in a space that doesn't feel welcoming if you don't belong there. I save up my personal little cache of spending money so I can make the extra trip into the city for the meeting because I need the support since I really don't like nursing the baby that much. It is very obvious that if I said that, I would get a lot of silence or stories about "when we were in medical school" (hint: spouses of med students often say this, and I get that it's a very awful situation to go through but only one of you is a doctor so you weren't both in medical school... ahem...) and it reeks of privilege and I am uncomfortable while being more comfortable at the same time.

There's a mom who I've kinda made friends with who's exclusively pumping and I feel like she and I have more in common than a lot of the other ladies - we aren't saying much about something that's really significant in our lives (she doesn't mention pumping during meetings, I stay silent during discussions of nursing attire because that is a million miles from in my budget in the past year). I have a body type that would blend in pretty well in one of those awful Mad.ea movies and so some of it is body awareness - I do not look like the skinny yoga moms who run marathons with babies in strollers, nor will I ever, no matter if I hit my fitness goals and quiet weight goals. I can't nurse my baby in a cross body hold because my gut is in the way and my boobs just aren't located there anyway. It's nice to see what that should look like, sure, but it's a reminder that this is not really my place.

Of course there's the fertile discomfort element too. A few of the gals are having 4th or 5th babies in the near future, some having surprise additional babies. While I'll grant you that Little Monster really surprised me, it was after 3.5 years of hoping to stay pregnant out of the first trimester so it feels different than "whoops!" There's the guilt too that it will never be that easy for us, never so simple as "well, I'm about 7 weeks now so it's safe to tell you."

The LLL movement was founded by a bunch of stay at home white gals who were pretty well off and it shows in the main handbook (which I read an edition ago so maybe it's better now?) and to a large degree in who attends the meetings. It is weird to me to hear about moms deciding to stay home because it's best for their babies. I mean I suppose it is but it's not an option for me or most people I know IRL.

One of the things I try very hard to do is to get out of my comfort zone and to recognize my neighbors as people just like me. At this end of being broke, where we've asked enough of our close family that we can't ask again for at least a decade and where we are one car repair away from a month of skipped meals for an adult, I have a lot more in common with my neighbors who send money to their families in other countries than I realized. I have a lot more in common with the rest of the 60% of families in my town whose children get free or reduced lunch than I do with my upper middle class white "peers" who do things like take vacations. I'm excited I get to go to a conference next month. It's required for school (to go to any conference for a minimum number of hours) and on the expensive side but we pinched every penny to make it work. I know I'm eating rice and beans while I'm away on rotations next year because there's no other way for us to afford all that travel. I'm stockpiling them now in fact.

The first step to overcoming the divide between us and them is seeing that the divide is there. The second step is reaching across and knowing that the line between well off and destitute is so narrow any of us could get there any minute now. The third step is looking at our skin and our gender and our relationship status and noticing all the privileges we get just for showing up. Then once we see where we are, we step back from privileges given us unfairly whenever we get the chance.

The vanishing act

Things have been quite wild around here so here's a speedy update with bullets.

• Little Monster is now officially one. She walks and says a few words and climbs stairs. It boggles my mind. Sometimes she gets close to a tantrum when expressing her opinion like by violently smacking away a sippy cup of milk repeatedly while asking to nurse (so that's how weaning is going...).
• The mystery health problem has resolved itself simply and in time, things should be all back to normal. That's just about the most exciting thing ever.
• The kid is excelling at pushing my buttons and testing every limit and every boundary every opportunity she gets. It is infuriating and stressful and I am not coping very well.
• School carries on. Senioritis is severe at this point. My rotations are all confirmed and I got all my first choices and I'll be out of town for over half of next year.
• The trip to visit my friend in hospice went really well. Little Monster was a saint baby and only one person was rude to us. She screamed and fussed for less than 5 minutes total on each flight. On the way out we didn't check our carry-on suitcase but on the way back I was so tired I succumbed. It was a good choice. The visiting part was really nice and fun until the last day when sad baby was super sad the whole day. It's a hard experience to see someone for what's probably the last time even if we'll chat more over the next few months but it was fun too to get to visit in person.
• I'm at the point in the semester where I'm sure I failed the crucial midterm and I'll wind up having to take a leave of absence and spend another freaking year in school. The grade for the exam won't be done for ages so it isn't like the stress will go away.
• I am trying to keep up with reading blogs but I make no promises about commenting as things are so crunched for time.
• Very soon I will be gone during the week and home only for weekends. It's weird for me to think through how that will work. It's weird for me to imagine being gone that much. It's weird to think about rotations being real after so much time in a classroom. Work! Real work! Patients and people to talk to who aren't going to call me a kid (this is my favorite compliment and I say so often to my professors, especially those who are fewer than 5 years older than me)!
• I miss sleeping a whole lot. I think my first rotation if I have time off in the evenings, I'm going to sleep 2 or 3 hours early to try and catch up.