A Health Journey

It’s always interesting to have people over to our apartment for the first time. The inevitable “What’s that?” is asked in regard to the gallons of kombucha that are in the process of brewing, or mason jars full of sauerkraut. They look almost in awe of the homemade sourdough that hangs out on the counter throughout the week. And those three things, ten years ago, would have seemed so strange to me. In fact I know I hadn’t yet heard of kombucha, and my only interactions with sauerkraut and sourdough were very commercial products, far from the beneficial and nourishing food that sits on my countertops. And those are just three things, right on the surface, easily pointed out. What would 20-year-old Bekah think also of avoiding conventional medicine, bedsharing with my 2-year-old, breastfeeding past the typical American weaning age, making many of my own beauty and body-care products, eating butter like slices of cheese, consuming minimal to zero refined sugar, having regular chiropractic care as one of the most important health defenses, making copious amounts of bone broth (and turning very carnivorous), deciding against circumcision for Harrison or any future boys we have, not going to “well-baby” visits with my child, or staying far away from vaccinations in any member of our family?

In terms of this decidedly not mainstream lifestyle, how did I even get here? 20-year-old Bekah would have had that question, and so many people who know me in this present day have asked. Truth be told, there is no glaring answer. It started with food and it's led to everything else and it’s taken ten years to make these changes. They’ve primarily happened one at a time, with plenty of space in between to make them such a part of my lifestyle that I don’t even think about them, it’s just who I am today.

Who was 20-year-old Bekah? A typical college student. Going to class or avoiding it, depending on the day. A different color hair each month (or so it seemed). Painfully introverted but surrounded by a community of friends who loved me for who I was. Slightly rebellious against the strict rules at my college. Took Tylenol or Ibuprofen for menstrual cramps. Ate all my meals at the cafeteria- lived on pasta or sandwiches with loads of lunch meat. Became a vegetarian the end of senior year though rarely thought about the food I was putting in my body.

I became a vegetarian initially to save money- I was grocery shopping for myself during the last semester of college. Back at my parent's house my Mom was in the process of changing the way she ate and fed our family, and it was due to her influence that I decided that if I wasn't buying organic meat, I wasn't going to buy it at all. I had no intentions to stick with it. (But yet I stuck with it for 10 years.) I lived off of frozen Kashi bowls and canned soup that semester, and I still remember the “No Chicken Soup” throwing me for a loop with its pieces of “chicken.” I just wanted vegetable soup. To this day I can’t stand tofu, and for good reason anyway, it does the body no good whatsoever.

Living on my own a year after graduation was a time for learning. I was figuring out what it meant to cook for one (or two, as Jer and I were dating and we had dinner together most nights), and I ate a lot of organic food, in the name of health, that was definitely not healthy. Sugar-laden yogurt, processed pizza pockets, pre-packaged vegetables with unnecessary additives. I thought I was doing alright. At this point I was also still popping Tylenol for every menstrual cramp, but had started to learn the wonders of homeopathy for impending sickness in the form of Boiron’s Cold Calm. I’m sure I also discovered Oscillococcinum sometime around then, and I’ve certainly never looked back (don’t tell past-me that Oscillococcinum is NOT vegetarian.) 

I moved to Los Angeles, watched Forks Over Knives (a vegan documentary), and decided it was all true and I needed to cut out allllllll animal products. I tried and didn’t last more than a few days. I didn’t know how to survive without dairy. (And I’m glad I didn’t. I recently listened to this podcast and it was SO enlightening, so informative, and it just makes so much sense. Great info on why the vegan diet is not good for our bodies long term, and great info on why eating dairy and/or meat is necessary for the health and nourishment of our bodies, the health of our environment, and the only hopeful option for feeding the whole world. Take a half hour and listen!)

Jer and I got married in 2013 and little by little I became more domestic, primarily with cooking (I'm still seemingly incapable of decorating our home in a pleasing aesthetic, oh well.) I did a lot of meal-planning and started cooking from scratch more often than not. Cooking from scratch with real foods led me to start considering what else I was putting in and on my body. If I was so concerned about toxins in the produce at the grocery store, what about the ingredients in my shampoo, or makeup, or body lotion? What about the plastics surrounding us that leach BPA and BPS into our food? I am very thankful that I never considered using any sort of contraceptive that chemically altered my body's natural rhythm, instead I learned about my body through the Fertility Awareness Method (and have used it to positive effect, even now almost five years later). I stopped using Tylenol- the last conventional medicine in my cabinets- and cleaning up my diet over the years has meant that my body produces no symptoms for "needing" it anyway. I made small changes regarding all of those things in that time, and over the years it has turned in to using some homemade makeup; brushing my teeth with homemade toothpowder; no deodorant (occasionally coconut oil) (and no, I don't smell, diet has helped with that also); a kitchen full of glassware, stainless steel, and cast iron; a medicine cabinet stocked with items like activated charcoal, elderberry syrup, gemmotherapy tinctures, arnica montana, vitamin C, and colloidal silver, to name a few; baking soda followed by apple cider vinegar to wash my hair; and I have dipped my toe into the world of essential oils but I'm not quite there yet, aside from diluted Frankincense to aid with fading a deep scar in Harrison's cheek.

Fast forward to August 2015 when I learned I was pregnant (thanks to everything I learned from the fertility awareness method), and I began considering even more what living a healthy lifestyle meant. I was in good health and took care of myself fairly well throughout those nine months, though I also still had plenty of Doritos, and other processed foods and refined sugar. I broke my vegetarianism and ate a little bit of chicken during my pregnancy, took fermented cod liver oil, and took desiccated liver capsules for a few months (probably not enough to be beneficial.) Looking back on my pregnancy, there's much that I would change in terms of how I cared for myself, and I have those notes tucked away for any future pregnancies. Being pregnant brought on many questions about how Jeremy and I wanted to care for our baby after its arrival, and these questions caused my journey into healthy living to travel much more quickly than the previous meandering years.

Little Harrison, once he was born, rocked our world. Of course we only wanted the best for him, and his arrival put me on a fast track for figuring out what lifestyle I really thought was beneficial. I came across this blog post that had so much curious advice, and the biggest take away was information about the Weston A. Price Foundation's nutrition guidelines for pregnant and breastfeeding women. This was the first time I heard about WAP, and now three years later I have just become a member. The information that the Weston A. Price foundation has to offer (the linked post is only the tip of the iceberg) has truly changed my perspective on food and nutrition, and I appreciate that it is backed my both scientific knowledge and anecdotal evidence from generations upon generations upon generations past.

While I am still a long (long, long, long) way away from following the WAP guidelines for pregnant and nursing women, over the past few months I have started eating more and more meat, to the point that I can't call myself any sort of vegetarian anymore. Chicken and turkey are something, but I have indulged in bacon, hot dogs, and ground beef at this point (of course I'm very careful about sourcing it well). We drink raw milk daily and take at least a half a teaspoon of fermented cod liver oil each day (Harrison included- Harrison especially!) I sooo sooo miss being able to walk out to my parent's backyard in the morning to gather fresh, pastured eggs for breakfast, but we buy the best we are able to find here, and eat them with runny yolks (Jeremy eats them raw for the most part). I eat slabs of butter in crazy amounts on sourdough bread, and Harrison loves to eat it straight (and maybe I've done that too). I cooked chicken liver for the first time the other day (fed it to Jer and Harrison, I'm not quite there yet), and I'm just about ready to to start buying it in bulk instead of relying on what is inside the whole chickens I purchase. Of course kombucha and sauerkraut are consumed in large amounts in our household, and I am about to start making milk kefir. We avoid sugar almost 100% at this point, and there are plenty of nourishing alternatives so we won't be going back (ok so occasionally it's still a nice treat, but it's so much easier for me to stay away from mindlessly eating it now). 

The information in these two podcasts (here and here) as well as Kelly Brogan's book, caused Jeremy and me to make a dramatic shift in the way we look at food and the way we consider every bite that we eat. These days I am ALL ABOUT GUT HEALTH. Everything I put into my body does something good or bad to my gut, and every system in my body requires a healthy gut to function correctly. All physical and mental health relies on gut health. I cannot understate that, I cannot understate how much I fully believe that. I can't look at a sick person anymore- minor cold, major short-term illness, lifelong autoimmune disease, whatever it is- and not wonder about their gut health and if they have tried altering their diet to relieve symptoms and heal their body from the inside out. The GAPS diet can turn physical and mental illness around, and the AIP diet can be a major help, while pharmaceuticals will mostly just cover symptoms and make life tolerable at best, all while damaging the gut further. This is my current soapbox. This may be my forever soapbox.

Do you know what else damages a healthy gut? Vaccines. Is that why we have chosen to forgo vaccines in our family? Not initially, but it's absolutely one of the many factors now. Our journey to that decision is four years in the making and requires its very own blog post, to be published in the next few days once my thoughts are coherently gathered together and my sources are linked. I'll leave you with this- the very first reason why we decided against vaccinations for our growing family was that we hadn't researched them enough. We knew that administering a vaccine could never be undone, and if we decided they were beneficial, waiting on them was not going to be harmful.

Ooooh this post is getting so long. So many things I still haven't touched on, but here's a blog post I read before I was pregnant that opened my eyes to the world of breastfeeding and bed-sharing and a type of attachment parenting that felt so right for our future family- and has become a large part of the way we've raised Harrison and it's worked so well for us. Our style of parenting is not something that was modeled to us, and I am thankful that I was able to learn of this perspective before Harrison was even conceived. 

And the circumcision debate! Oi, I think that one requires its own blog post as well. We didn't know Harrison's gender until a few moments after he was born, but obviously we did some research to have a decision about circumcision made before that moment. We decided against it initially because we just thought it was unnecessary. We didn't give much more thought to it. But now. But now you guys. I am armored with far more information I had in those late months of pregnancy and early months of caring for Harrison, even through his first year or more, and I am so sad that it is considered a routine and acceptable procedure in such tiny little beings who have no say in the matter. More on that in a later post, but like with vaccinations, circumcision can never be undone. If it's decided that it is beneficial or necessary, waiting on it is not going to be harmful. Research first. In all things. Maybe that's my soapbox. 

So here we are. Here I am. 20 year old Bekah is probably a bit flabbergasted at who 30 year old Bekah has become, but the 10 years it took to get here have made this lifestyle seem so normal. It is normal. It is my normal. Who knows where I'll be at 40? Earthing? Taking steps to avoid all the radiation in our environment? (Well I do have this phone case, to start.) Taking the plunge into essential oils? Owning a goat farm and selling milk and kefir and cheese and sauerkraut and kombucha at farmers markets (life dream you guys!) Who knows. We'll see where this journey continues to take me. I'm always open to learning about the best ways to maintain whole body health using what nature has provided for us. In this world that is ever the opposite, I want to continue to take it all in and pass it down to Harrison and his children and generations after that. Someone needs to.

What's Going On

A friend of mine has occasionally written posts that hit on a lot of goings-ons without all the detail, and I always enjoy them. Took the idea for this post, I hope you don’t mind, Hannah! A quick glimpse of life these days ...

Locking the cupboard at work that houses all the spices. So far Harrison has dumped an entire container of gourmet smoked sea salt flakes and has eaten ground cayenne.
Dumping the vacuum full of gourmet smoked sea salt flakes. Will they be missed? (Hi Beth and Andrew, if you ever see this.)
Baking a variation of these low-guilt cookies.
Going to the Farmers Market every Sunday.
Cooking bone broth and bacon. Who even am I?
Eating bacon and alllllll the meat. Seriously who even am I? Ground turkey meat sauce over spaghetti squash is a current favorite.
Wearing so many clothes I don’t feel good in. I need a wardrobe makeover.
Joining the Weston A. Price Foundation and so excited about it.
Going on dates with Jer, consistently. Why did it take us this long?
Decorating our apartment. After four years of living here, and almost five years of marriage, I’ve realized we can make our living space a home. Walls can be painted, towels can be coordinated, our bedroom doesn’t need to be a dumping space for everything that doesn’t have a place to go.
Sewing the curtains I trimmed with kitchen shears and then threw in the wash. Ok so I haven’t sewed them yet and there are hundreds of loose threads hanging off of them.
Drinking homemade kombucha, obviously. And lots of full-fat raw milk.
Reading The Whole Brain Child, finished it a few days ago and resonated with everything I learned from it. Started and finished The Handmaid’s Tale in two sittings last Saturday. Can’t remember the last time I’ve done that, and it was glorious. Working my way through Celebration of Discipline and discussing it with friends bi-weekly.
Walking all around Culver City, maintaining my “two baby dog lady” persona during the workweek.
Watching The Last Jedi. Finally. And I happily avoided spoilers. And I started The Handmaid’s Tale the day after I read the book.
Looking at all the barefoot shoes on a variety of websites and can’t make up my mind. I bought these and am happy with them, but I also want a pair of closed-toe shoes that do not look like running shoes.
Playing at the park with Harrison and Edith. Can’t stay cooped up inside with two children all day.
Wishing we weren’t on the opposite coast of my family.
Enjoying my slow entrance back in to running.
Loving these shirts Becki sent to Harrison and me, I love the shirts and I love that they were sent just because.
Needing a best girl friend. Life has been lonely, not gonna lie.
Wanting a good haircut. I was considering chopping it to my shoulders but I’m not so sure anymore. What can I do that is easily maintainable and works well for thick hair that has tight waves in the bottom layers?
Feeling some feels about my baby turning two in just over a month.
Listening to the Wise Traditions podcast, one or two episodes every day. I'm realizing more and more that these are my people.
Learning so much about gut health and the amazing ways the body can heal itself, physically AND mentally.
Thinking about my new learned ideas of what healthy is. All day long. Changes are abounding.
Traveling internationally with Jer and Harrison in September!
Taking Harrison to the bathroom every 45 minutes - 1 hour.
Hoping he starts self-initiating more consistently.
Riding my skateboard. Finally! Took it out on Sunday for the first time and had a blast, excited to get more confident with it.

"Early" Potty Training

On February 16th at 4pm I took Harrison's diaper off. While I did, I explained to him (as I had occasionally during the week previous), that we were now all done with diapers, and he wasn't going to wear them anymore. He had a hint of understanding- he seemed at first slightly sad, or concerned. He looked at his diaper all wrapped up on top of the changing table next to him and picked it up to study it. He's never been interested in looking at his dirty diapers before. I asked him if he wanted to throw it away, so he got down and took it to the trash can to drop it in. He gave it one last look, picked it back up for a brief moment, and then walked out of the bathroom play, buck naked. He was 21.5 months old.

It's been 10 days and he hasn't had a diaper on him since. (For better or worse!)

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Why February 16th? It was a Friday, and I had a half day of work. The following Monday Jeremy had off work. So Harrison got a good three and half days at home to start learning potty independence before we went back to our typical schedule. This was crucial to get a beneficial start.

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On that first afternoon/evening, Harrison wore no clothes and I stuck close to him the entire time. It was not a day to get distracted by my phone or wash dishes while he played independently. I kept a direct eye on him and kept him occupied with plenty of games and books and toys. When he did play independently, I sat out of the way but stayed close enough to continually observe. Anytime he started to pee, I moved him to his tiny potty and explained that pee goes in the potty, not on the floor. I had a spray bottle of 50/50 vinegar/water and a roll of paper towels nearby for the misses. As was expected, we had our fair share of misses. You can't potty train without misses. You just can't. At bedtime he wore long sleeves and pants as usual, but no diaper underneath. We explained to him that if he needed to pee, we would help him push down his pants and move him to his little potty that was right next to the bed. We made sure he peed just before he fell asleep, and then we woke him up a few hours later, around 11, and got him to pee again, half asleep. He woke up on his own two more times that night (as is very typical of him), and we got him to pee each time before I nursed him back to sleep. It was an exhausting night for all of us, and we had a small miss in the early hours of the morning, but the small consolation prize was that he slept until 9am! Learning new skills = sleep!

That next day Harrison gave us a lot of resistance and it was a loooooong day. He was still buck naked and we just stuck with him and moved him to the potty as we were able to. It felt very difficult and left me wondering why we started in the first place. He fought going on the potty, he fought nap time, he fought bedtime. He screamed and cried and choked on his tears and brought me to tears a few times, I felt so lost. That night was a lot of the same, though he stayed dry until 7am after refusing to sit on his potty two times throughout the night. Less sleep than the night before, and we felt slightly defeated.

Day three brought more misses. We mixed things up a bit and took him for a short walk outside, his first time with daytime pants on diaper-less. We visited an apartment open house (why?!) and as you can imagine the direction this story is going ... he left a large puddle for me to clean up, and I had to run home to get the spray bottle and paper towels. Oops. During nap time I re-read a few sections of the book we were using and realized that we were hovering too much and prompting too much, making it very, very stressful on Harrison (and us). The book also mentions days two and three are typically the most difficult in terms of resistance, and it gave some tools for how to handle it. We backed off on prompting and hovering, gave Harrison some small activities to keep him busy while on the potty, and had a lot of success the rest of the day.

That night was another frustrating night of resistance, but yet another night of him staying dry even while refusing to sit on the potty.

Day four brought mixed success, but increasing resistance as the day went on. He had a very rough evening, everything was off- not just potty training. He refused to sit at the dinner table, he refused to let us brush his teeth, he was angry as we helped him with his pajamas, he screamed for the potty as Jer was trying to get him to go to bed, but screamed for the bed as soon as he was on the potty. The whole thing was emotionally draining for all of us. I was a wreck the next morning, day five, and it was the first day he was coming back to work with me. I spent the day partially in tears, cleaning up more misses than I could keep track of, and dealing with the general goings-ons of an almost 2-year-old and an almost 1-year-old and an excitable dog.

BUT. But, but but.

At the end of the workday I made sure to let Harrison know that I needed him to pee before we got in the car to go home. The time came, and I locked us in the bathroom, distraction-free, and he fought me for a bit. We chatted, we played with some toys, we sang some songs, we counted to 20, etc etc etc. He wouldn't sit and wouldn't sit and wouldn't sit. Until then he did. He signed "potty" and sat and peed. Without any effort on my part. He just did it. What?

Looking back, that was the turning point, towards the end of day five. Something clicked, he changed his mind about all the resistance, he realized I wasn't messing around, he knew this was the new normal, and he complied- happily. We had an easy evening together, the three of us. We had an enjoyable family dinner, we played some games, he used the potty without issue whenever we prompted, and he went to bed simply. Our toddler was back. And he was ready to use the potty.

The days after that have been enjoyable, and we are back to our usual routines. Harrison is commando all day- we will start using underwear in a few weeks when he's (hopefully) forgotten the muscle memory of "something is tight around my bum, I guess I'm allowed to relieve myself in it." We've been averaging one or two misses per day, mostly at times that I realize in hindsight I should have thought to prompt him. He is not doing much self-prompting at this time, but he is better at holding it than he used to be. I have a good idea of when to prompt him, and I keep in the back of my mind how much liquid he's had to gauge when he may need to go again. We always get the "easy" catches: first thing in the morning, and during times of transition- leaving to go for a walk, coming back home from a walk or whatnot, before/after nap time, before bedtime. Overnights typically have one or two wakes to pee/nurse, and he easily falls back asleep. We've only had one nighttime miss in the past five days. He has stayed consistently dry every single nap (knock on wood) throughout the entire process.

Takeaways-

I am so glad we did this now. There's going to be resistance to the process at any age, and we've already gotten past the hump. I am not naive to the fact that there will be some regression at times, and I'll still be cleaning up misses for a while. But he is coming up on 22 months old, and putting his pee/poo in the potty has been fully normalized to him already. I am very proud of that for him.

Did elimination communication help? Yes, and no. EC and potty training are two separate processes. And we did EC casually and part-time, and we were unfortunately in the midst of an EC regression when we started potty training. However, EC DID help to normalize using the potty, and I think the biggest help is that it normalized pooping on the potty. We always had better success with poo rather than with pee during our EC journey. We've caught probably 80% of poos on the potty since he was around 6 months old. I am forever grateful that we are not dealing with a toddler who is afraid to poop on the potty, or flat out refuses too, or screams for a diaper to poop in, or poops in the corner of the house. It's been so normalized to Harrison from so early on that we have had zero issues with it. Praise be!

Ideas like "getting him used to the potty first" or wearing training pants or using sticker charts to celebrate success or bribing with any number of things. I'm so happy we didn't have that mindset. The method we used makes some great points about the detriment of many of those options and strongly urges against them. I believe we have had a better outcome due to avoiding all of that.

The process of potty training over the past ten days has helped Jeremy and I to have some good and tough discussions about our parenting style and setting boundaries. It's helped me to firm up some of my slippery ideas of being very laid back about Harrison's wants. It's helped us to find some firm boundaries that can be set to help Harrison be more confident in his surroundings. It's helped me to continue to learn a better balance of being laid back and being firm, without being shameful or unkind. This is the first thing that Jeremy and I have actively taught Harrison, and the first thing that Harrison has actively learned from us. The beginning of it was SO hard, and being on the other side of that difficulty is SO rewarding.

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We went out to eat on Saturday and we went out for ice cream on Sunday. I wasn't even concerned about Harrison being diaper-free. And he proved I had no reason to be. We got to each location and held him over the big potty to relieve himself, and he did, and we went on with our business, hanging out with friends and eating delicious food. The normalcy of that gives me a sense of awe, and admittedly a bit of a pat on my back as well. I'm just very happy about it. And now I want to shout from the hills that everyone can do this.

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We used the method in Jamie Glowacki's book "Oh Crap! Potty Training." I recommend it 100%. Clearly we've had good success with it, but aside from that I also appreciate her outlook on parenting, and setting limits, and her no-nonsense attitude about some aspects of potty training, and her SHAME-FREE approach to it all. Her method is broken down simply in the book, and there is a large section dedicated to "troubleshooting," if you will. I was re-reading and re-reading and re-reading it throughout the first few days of potty training. (We're borrowing a copy from the library and I have so far renewed it three times!) I also found so much support and solidarity in a Facebook group of parents who are using the same method. Also, FYI, you don't have to do daytime and nighttime training at the same time, that was personal preference for Jeremy and me. And I am very glad we did it that way, I think it's one more way we've set Harrison up for success, even as it is a bit more work for us.

*I will repeat, we are not "done" potty training yet, by any stretch. I know that. Harrison is barely self-prompting, and we are only 10 days in so I am fully aware that there will be PLENTY more misses. I don't leave the house without at least three extra pairs of pants and socks for him, and quite a few hand towels, at the very least. We go to work with the vinegar spray bottle and a huge roll of paper towels, just in case. And he sleeps on the bed on top of a wool pad and a folded over fleece blanket. We are prepared for the worst while continuing to give Harrison tools to set him up for success each day and night. And each day gets a little bit better, and our collective confidence continues to grow.

Family bed, set up for potty training success.
Maybe the next post will be about sharing our bed with our toddler and three cats.
Oh hey, Oscar!

motherhood at twenty-one months

Last year around this time I wrote nine months old, heart on my sleeve. What is it about this time of year that makes me have so many feels?

We're just three months away from having a two year old. He is more fun to be with every day; so inquisitive, so daring, so happy in his little world, so excited about the bigger world around him. Watching him learn is mind-blowing, I love seeing the connections he makes between things. I love seeing him express his emotions. I love experiencing the way he loves. The other morning he rolled over when he first woke up and nursed a bit. His eyes met mine and he gave me a milky smile and a little wave. That's some heart-melting stuff right there, the best way to wake up. I truly love him more and more each day.

And in this deep love, in this now 21-month journey in motherhood, I have started to notice an occasional change in myself. I've caught glimpses of someone that I haven't been in tune with in ... twenty-one months. I noticed the other day that I felt a different kind of alive than I've felt in a while. It was when I was without Harrison, which isn't a scenario that happens often. It was slightly confusing, actually. I felt like the person I was before Harrison was in my life, I felt like I was on the outside of motherhood while being engrossed in it all the same. It was a good kind of alive, but it was one that I didn't actually miss very much, and it left me curios.

I felt like my "old self" in those moments and began to question what that really meant. Did it really take me twenty-one months to get back to being a person that I didn't even know I lost? When our family grows again, will it take me another twenty-one months to get back to where I am now?

I brought this scenario and the questions up to a trusted friend and super mama of four. And as always, she had some very insightful and wise offerings for me.

No, it's not going to take me twenty-one months again. Because really what I glimpsed was just that- a glimpse. It wasn't something that I lost, and it's not something that is actually attainable for the long-term. I'm not getting that "old self" back, because in the nine months that I grew Harrison and in these twenty-one months that I've cared for him on this side of the world, I've been growing myself as a mother. I can't feasibly feel the kind of alive that I felt in those moments on a daily basis, because I'm feeling a different kind of alive these days. I think that's why these glimpses felt so unique and confusing. They were nice, but they didn't equate to current real life.

Real life these days is waking up before Harrison so I can have everything together enough to get us to work on time. Real life these days is budgeting for a babysitter so Jeremy and I can go out once a week. Real life these days is patiently letting Harrison explore the sidewalks of Los Angeles and walking up and down the same concrete steps with him ten times in a row. Real life these days is finally implementing self-care- going for a run, reading a book, writing on the couch instead of while pushing a stroller. Real life these days is taking deep breaths when my patience is maxed out, and apologizing to my 21-month-old when a lack of patience brings a harsh tone of voice or picking him up too roughly. Real life these days is often missing out on seeing movies in theaters but an anticipation of curling up on the couch with Jeremy to eventually watch them in our living room. Real life these days is reading the same book out loud to Harrison over and over again. Real life these days is thinking on my feet to get a stubborn toddler to willingly do what I need. Real life these days is realizing there are less of those "needs" than I sometimes realize. Real life these days is being late to gatherings because said toddler all the sudden needs to use the bathroom as we are headed out the door, or he is still napping and there is no way we are sacrificing his sleep. Real life these days is playing violin, or piano, or guitar, and listening to him SING with me. Real life these days is sharing my kombucha. Real life these days is allll the dance parties. Real life these days is watching him do things he couldn't do two weeks previous. Real life these days is toddler giggles, toddler hugs, toddler love. Real life these days is full of So Much Love.

The thing about real life, the consistency of the ups and the downs and the juggling of caring for all the beings in our household including myself, is that it is quite wonderful. The struggles are real, and hard, and we push through them, and learn from them, and come out the other side better for them. The highs are beautiful, and carefree, and we live in them, and also learn from them, and also come out the other side better for them. These struggles and triumphs aren't glimpses that we lose as quickly as we see them, instead they are where we are right now, building on top of our past. There is nothing we have truly lost, there is just much we have gained that has taken precedence.

Motherhood has opened up my heart a thousand times over. Here's to the next twenty one months.

Cloth Diapering

The other day I packed away all of Harrison's cloth diapers- about two dozen flour sack towels, three hemp-cotton flats, a few hemp doublers, a few covers, and a few wool shorts. Much like packing away tiny little baby clothes, it was very bittersweet. For 20 months, those supplies kept Harrison diapered, over and over again. They fit into a small bin and are now sitting in our closet, out of the way until there's another Kozling in this world.

We are not quite done with diapers yet, but over the past few months cloth diapering has become more of a chore than something I've been happy to do. Somewhere between working a full-time job, not having a full-size washer and not owning a dryer (necessitating washing diapers every other day in our portable washer and using all of our quarters to dry them in the shared apartment laundry facility), Harrison going through an EC regression which for a season meant more poops to clean out of the diapers, and spending three weeks in Florida using disposable diapers- somewhere between all of that we decided we were done. We needed one less thing on our to-do list, one less task in our busy family life. So we bought some disposable diapers, tried them out, and then bought some more. It was time.

But here's the deal- despite opening this post with the negative, in all reality, cloth diapering has been an incredibly positive experience. It worked so well for us in the season that we did it, and I'm proud of us for realizing that we came to a point in our busy life that it didn't make sense for us anymore. I believe that if we had our own full-size washer and dryer permanently hooked up in a laundry room, we would have seen it through to the end. Or if I was a full-time stay at home mom, rather than a full-time bring-my-son-to-work mom. Or honestly, if my employers had a dryer that worked well, that could have made things better. But the pieces just didn't fit together any more, and we stopped in time for me to look back on cloth diapering fondly enough that I know we WILL be taking those diapers out for baby #2 (someday. This is not a baby announcement.)

It also helps that we have a hard end-date for diapers altogether. We are starting potty training on February 16th and are not looking back after that date. So we have enough disposable diapers to get us through until then. You all can look forward to a fun post about potty training a 21-month-old in the coming weeks!

So- these cloth diapers. Why? The details have never been set in stone in our minds, but it was a good mixture of environmental impact, cost, chemicals, and keeping ourselves encouraged to continue with elimination communication.

Our cloth diapering supplies cost us far less than $200, and we used them for 20 months. Seeing as how our budget was in the red for the first eight months of Harrison's life, this was basically a necessity. Once I started working some part-time jobs and then my current full-time job, it still felt silly to spend $50+ a month on something that we already had figured out. We live fairly low-waste in our home in the first place- reusable paper towels, glassware and stainless steel food containers and reusable ziplock bags for storing food and packing lunch and snacks, cloth grocery bags, mama cloth and a Diva cup (you're welcome for that TMI), minimal plastic, and making a concerted effort to borrow items or purchase things second-hand. We are nowhere near zero-waste, but with all that we do do, it feels funny to throw things away. Cloth diapers were another way to minimize the trash in our home.

Whether or not it is 100% accurate, this is a good representation of disposable diaper waste.

As eco-friendly/green/crunchy/hippie/what-have-you that I have become in my adulthood, the majority of the disposable diapers on the market did not meet my preferences. We used four packs of disposable diapers when Harrison was first born, to bide us a little bit of time while we were getting used to having him around, and we decided on the Bambo Nature brand for those first two weeks, as it met my strict standards. With those strict standards came a hefty price, so it didn't make sense to continue with them even if we wanted to. We've settled on Seventh Generation for daytime and Honest diapers for nighttime for these next few weeks. As Harrison has gotten older I've become less stringent with my standards, and both of those brands fall somewhere in the middle when it comes to what they are made of. And honestly, I am aware that the cloth diapers that we used- simple flour sack towels from Target- are made of 100% cotton, and you could easily make the argument that they have a bad environmental impact and are full of chemicals since they are not organic cotton and require a ton of water for processing (and washing). We're not perfect, but we found our middle ground.

And then there was elimination communication. This was a big deal to us, and I don't think we would have had as much success as we did if we used disposable diapers. Cloth diapers should really be changed every 2 hours and/or after every pee, since they have no stay-dry qualities (you can hack a stay-dry cloth diaper by putting a fleece or wool liner in it, but we didn't use that option). You don't want to let your child run around in a wet cloth diaper so you need to stay on top of diaper changes. And the flour sack towels didn't hold more than one large pee before leaking (there are plenty of other options that are more absorbent.) This helped us with EC since I fell into a routine of offering Harrison the potty with every (frequent) diaper change, and it worked out in our benefit in a cyclical way: checking his diaper to change him every 1-2 hours meant I would often find a dry diaper, and if I found a dry diaper I was more likely to then catch a pee, which in turn would then help keep his diaper dry until the next time I checked it. On a good day, I could keep him in the same dry cloth diaper for half the day or more. When Harrison is in a disposable diaper, I definitely don't check it as frequently (though these days he is more prone to tell me when he needs to pee, which is a great win!)

Cloth diapers have come a long way from a square piece of fabric and diaper pins, though that is essentially what we ended up using. On the market these days you can find all-in-one diapers, which you put on just like you would a disposable and put it in the wet bag to wash, rather than in the trash, when you change it. They have a waterproof outer layer and an attached absorbent inner layer. There are all-in-two diapers, which have a water proof outer shell and a detachable inner layer. When you change that diaper you detach the inner layer and you can re-use the outer shell with a new liner. There are pocket diapers that involve a waterproof shell with a pocket inside that is stuffed with a liner. These can be made with some sort of stay-dry fabric next to the baby's bum. There are fitted diapers that snap or velcro on and they are made of all sorts of different fabrics that you then put a cover over, or you can get prefolds or flour sack towels (both just large pieces of fabric) and fold them in different folds to fit your baby, and put a cover over them. There are covers made of polyurethane laminate, fleece, and wool. There are so many possibilities and it can be overwhelming. And it was overwhelming to me at first. But after some trial and error, we found what worked best for us.

We used Target's Room Essential brand of flour sack towels, FST for short (a variety of colors rather than just plain white, which was fun), and folded them in the Jo fold fastened with a snappi. Thirsties duo wrap covers with velcro worked well for us, and we rotated through three of them, washing them with the FSTs every two days. We had a few FuzziBunz pocket diapers that we used as back up covers when necessary. We also had some hemp/cotton blend doublers of various brands that we used to add absorbency as needed. Hemp is very absorbent and those inserts were very useful to have on hand. I found that Harrison would typically have a lot of pee first thing in the morning, so if we were unable to catch it in the toilet, I added one of the inserts in with the FST to keep the diaper from leaking with his first pee of the day. For overnights, we used a hemp/cotton blend flat (made by Truly Charis, but currently unavailable on their website) and folded it in the Jo fold and added a hemp doubler. We used wool covers for overnight. Wool is AMAZING. It has antibacterial properties, it can absorb up to 30% of its weight in liquid before feeling wet, it is temperature-regulating, and it is a natural fiber which of course makes me very happy. We had two Disana shorties in rotation for over night. Disana is at the lower end of the spectrum for wool, price-wise, and they worked just fine for nighttime use. We also used cloth wipes for quite a while- sprayed with a homemade solution of mostly water, a small bit of Castile soap, and witch hazel- though we used Water Wipes for poop once Harrison started solids (poop from an exclusively breastfed baby is water soluble and doesn't need to be rinsed before being put in the wash!)

So ... there it is. Cloth diapering the Kozeluh way. We made things perhaps a bit more difficult than we needed to but the season we used them was a good season. Cloth diapers can be very simple- you can buy enough all-in-ones to last you 5-7 days, store the used ones properly so they don't smell before they are washed, and throw them all into your regular-sized washer (with a good wash routine) once a week, then let them air dry. EASY. Apartment living and shared washers and all of the quarters and smog and etc etc etc made that more difficult for us, but our little portable washer washed our diapers SO WELL and it was all worth it. I am so looking forward to this next season of raising a child- the diaperless season. The potty trained season. Here's to February!

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I really just skimmed the surface of all of the possibilities for cloth diapering. If you're intrigued at all, one of the best resources for learning is Fluff Love University- not a question unanswered on their website or Facebook group!