sick baby – BabyCostsMoney

Out, Damned Toxins.

Published on March 13, 2017April 9, 2017 by Darlene Dee9 Comments

Out, I say. Get thee chemical self beyond my house!

Yes, perhaps I am being over-dramatic. But maybe not.

As I have mentioned over and over again, our home had the Plague for a full month. Many plagues in succession, actually. So I bought some Clorox bleach wipes and cleaned everything. Every. Thing.

What is better for Babystar to lick — bleach or germs? I genuinely don’t know. I DO know that the bleach destroyed the skin on my hands. The infinite hand washing likely did not help either. (Oh snap, I AM Lady Macbeth!)

I love Babyganics high chair and toy cleaning spray, but it has been out of stock at Target and Babies R Us whenever I have checked for the past two month. We ordered some from Amazon and seriously WHY didn’t I just do this earlier? It was $7.98 for two bottles.

During the height of the plague, Babystar got a diaper rash. She rarely gets diaper rash, and it could have happened for many reasons: she was sick, she was wearing disposable diapers for weeks, and she had a LOT of extra poopy diapers which meant a LOT of wipes against her skin. I can fix two of these things.

She’s back in cloth diapers. (I do not know for sure that the disposable diapers CAUSED her rash; Target brand disposables do not usually cause a rash and we use them as her overnight diapers. Ironically, Babyganics diapers DO cause a rash along the elastic edge but I think she is just sensitive to something in those particular diapers. Anyway.)

And after lots of research, we ordered a box of Water Wipes for $31.79 from Amazon. We had been using the Costco wipes with no issue, but I think the recent extra diaper changes using these wipes could have caused the rash. I totally, scientifically, tested one of the Costco wipes on my own (clean) bootie to see how it felt. It stung. Poor baby. Hopefully the Water Wipes will live up to the hype. (I totally tested them on myself already and there was no sting at all. It was a bit cold, though.)

Can we start a freaky internet challenge like planking and tebowing and owling (w.t.f.) called, um, wiping(??) where we test baby wipes on ourselves? Probably not; it would get X-rated pretty quickly. But I highly encourage every parent (DADS TOO) to test your baby’s wipes on yourself. You know, in the privacy of your own bathroom or youtube channel or whatever. It totally stung and kind of blew my mind.

Yes. YES. I challenge you all to try using your baby’s wipes on your own bits. Report back. Let’s get real.

Oh, also relating to this dark time of winter, we bought a humidifier ($49.99), we bought an extra 3-pack of pacifiers to switch them out more often ($6.99), and we paid a $15 co-pay at the doctor’s office. Y’all. The humidifier is an elephant. Meet Elly.

RAISING BABYSTAR: $15,272.14

Back to Cloth.

Published on February 16, 2017February 16, 2017 by Darlene Dee7 Comments

With few exceptions, Babystar has been in disposable diapers for about a month now. I started when I packed the bag for the Women’s March last month and disposables were so much lighter. I kept her in disposables through a bathroom renovation that took away my access to the diaper sprayer for a week. Then we all got sick and now we are better but yet the disposable diapers remain on the baby.

I’m not gonna lie — I don’t hate them. They are not as cute as the cloth diapers, but they definitely have their benefits.

But today we are back in cloth. Let’s do this!

We bought eleven packs of diapers during this glorious, lazy month. The Target brand was somehow always on sale for $4.99. Score! So $54.89 for almost a month. Eh. The fancy cloth we use costs $30-35 each. I think you CAN save money using cloth but I definitely did NOT.

(We still have disposables left but we also still use them at night and on Sundays in the church nursery.)

RAISING BABYSTAR: $14,738.38

Winter is Numbing.

Published on February 6, 2017April 9, 2017 by Darlene Dee2 Comments

Winter means indoor play spaces.

Indoor play spaces mean germs.

Germs mean sick babies.

Sick babies mean sick mamas.

When sick babies and sick mamas FINALLY feel better, they want to play. So we go to an indoor play space and puke and repeat.

We were lucky enough to have a few surprise parkweather days this winter, but we have mostly been spending all that overflowing toddler energy at indoor play spaces. Or literally puking on my head. Extremes are so IN this season.

We usually go to Busy Bees. Mostly because Babystar loves it so much. As soon as we are close, she starts chanting ‘balloon, dog, balloon.’ But actually mostly becuase it’s next to a Chick-fil-A and they sell magic chicken sandwiches with the superpower to instantly brighten my day.

I buy 3-visit passes to Busy Bees for $36. But if we show up in the last hour, it’s only $10 so I pay that instead. I have already spent $56 this calendar year at Busy Bees but I still have one visit on the card. Sometimes the toddlermonster lets me sit by the wall and zone out for a few minutes. Worth it.

We went to the recently opened Nook in north Arlington, which is basically the opposite of Busy Bees. It’s a ton of fun but full of neutral colors and imagination-based play stations. We loved it and will go back but it’s pricey at $20 (we went for $15 this visit with our MOMS group). Babystar made a painting (with really cool stamping markers so it’s basically pointillism right?), played in messy kinetic sand (that messy stuff they have near the front at every Brookstone in every mall), cooked some fake dinner, and tried to move in to this super cool tunnel with STARS in the ceiling (pinpricks of light but the babies were fooled). I didn’t snap pictures because I had other adults to talk to (AWESOME!) that day. Oh, plus they have free cookies. Hm. Now I want to go back.

We drove up to Maryland, to check out the College Park Aviation Museum. Babystar loves airplanes and she had a blast at this museum. It was completely deserted so she had all of the toys in the hands-on area to herself. She was actually free (under 2) but the Teenager and I were a combined $7. If we were closer, I would take her there all the time. (When we were leaving, the Secret Service rolled up and locked down the tiny airport next door. It was a few days before the inauguration and we totally wonder who was flying into College Park. And also, why? D.C. is kinda far away, especially in traffic.)

We checked out another soft play room close to home. The Chinquapin Park Recreation Center Soft Play Room is REALLY cool. It’s sort of small but with an extra bouncy floor and lots of tall things to climb on. Plus there is a giant ball pit. (And weird green lighting; I don’t know what that is about.) Babystar loved it and would want to go every day, but it’s $5/half hour. We spent $10 but she would have played another hour in there.

We space these out with free library story times (that always include lots of songs and wiggle time) and the free soft play room at the local community center. And parks, weather permitting. And if I’m being honest, sometimes I count running around Target as her outing for the day.

The other half of the days have been spent indoors on the couch. Sick. Sick. Sick. I got Babystar hooked on Super Wings (an airplane cartoon on Sprout — she LOVES airplanes) during a particularly bad stretch where the whole fam was sick, and now she is a Super Wings junkie. If the TV is off she just starts chanting, ‘airplanes, airplanes.’ Crap. Why didn’t I stick with the freaking penguin documentaries??

RAISING BABYSTAR: $14,631.67

#NaBloPoMo

Published on November 6, 2016December 12, 2016 by Darlene Dee2 Comments

Have you heard of NaBloPoMo?

~~It is THE trendy new neighborhood in Manhattan~~.

I think it started after NaNoWriMo, which is National Novel Writing Month (or something close to that). NaBloPoMo stands for National Blog Posting Month, and participants commit to posting every single day in November. I like short-term challenges due to my short attention span, so I totally joined up.

I made it three days, y’all.

But I am not giving up. I’m hopping back on the horse, picking up my boots, or some cowgirl metaphor like that, and getting back to it.

Dude (get it, because cowgirl). Everyone in my house was SO.FREAKING.SICK.

I saw things. Gross things.

Babystar started puking on Halloween and the poor baby’s tummy is still not right. Does anything smell worse than baby diarrhea? Short of death itself? Name something, because I cannot think of a single damn thing.

You don’t want to read anymore do you? Don’t worry, I won’t describe it. I want to. No one here will let me share my pain with them. The Teenager legit said ‘Mom, we can talk about anything you want. Anything. Except that. No one wants to hear it.’

I know. BUTOMG. I even tried discussing it with Babystar and I KNOW she can understand me because even she looked at me like why are you telling me this? Which is totally unfair because SHE DID IT.

I put a cloth diaper on her last Wednesday when I thought the coast was clear. The coast was not clear. I almost threw the $35 diaper straight into the garbage. I didn’t; I traumatized myself for life instead. Hey Cloth Diaper Mamas, what do you do when baby is sick? I’ve been buying disposables. (Holy crap they are expensive to use all the time! Of course, that cloth diaper cost $35, which admittedly was the most expensive diaper I’ve ever purchased and I don’t know why I put THAT one on her as a test but still.) So far since Monday I’ve bought three packs of Pampers at $9.99 each from Harris Teeter.

So this weekend I’m partying with two long lost friends: Clorox and Lysol. I usually use less harsh things to clean, but this feels necessary. Get thee behind me, Germs! Besides, our parents cleaned with actual bleach and we all survived.