Once a week I want to start doing a “spotlight” post, highlighting a friend’s blog or business. I have so many amazing, talented, interesting friends and I’d love to promote their sites here. Also, I know you would enjoy them and I like turning people on to new books/bands/blogs.
But for my first spotlight post, I want to direct you to a blog post I found very interesting. It’s a blog written by a teen mother. I can’t imagine having a baby when I was a teenager. It’s amazing I kept myself alive, let alone another human. So anyway, she blogs her thoughts, her struggles, her questions, and it’s interesting. I found this particular post on Restoring Tally’s site and I am going to link you to it, and you can go to her home page from there.
This post is about her feelings regarding circumcision, and it will be the last blog post I write on the topic. I’m very interested in it, just as I am interested in and passionately against female genital mutilation, but this blog isn’t “themed” on any one topic, not even my kids. It’s not a “mommy blog” or a music blog, a feminist blog, a spiritual blog, or a blog for a certain cause. It’s a Brandi Blog, and to stay on any one topic for too long would, I feel, distract from the overall image of who I am and what I’m about.
So bear with me while I post this one last hoorah to intactivism. Without further ado, I present you with the blog you’re missing out on: Fridge Magnets: Life of a Crunchy Teen Mom.
I LOVE THIS GIRL’S BLOG!! She is awesome. I think if I’d had to make these sorts of decisions as a teen, I would have never thought for a second about whether or not to circumcise a boy. I probably would’ve just done it, because that’s what people do. Now that I’m an adult and think for myself I would NEVER “just do” anything. (Well, I may do some things that probably shouldn’t be done, but we all have our vices.) Big kudos to her for exploring the issue & making her own decision as such a young mother. I see she’s also made up her mind about her religious beliefs (lack thereof, rather) and is standing her ground on her blog. I would’ve NEVER been able to post that at her age. (Although wherever she lives may treat atheists better than Mississippi.)
I’m gonna keep up with her blog… she’s also into cloth diapering, which is something I’m very interested in. (Although I am a little afraid, I don’t do yucky very well as it is.)
Oh nevermind, she lives in Florida. Go on with your bad self!
Thank you for the spotlight :] I never expected someone to ever link my blog lol!
And thank you murmurkibbles!
Great blog!
I myself am a lactivist. It’s great to know there is someone else out there that is passionate without being condescending.
Thanks, RG!
That chicka is pretty darn AWESOME. to be so young have sooooo much in her plate and care enough to not only speek up but be so unappologetic about it…… refreshing.
Kibbies, my mom did the cloth diaper thing, but she’s used modern diapers and said she’d absolutely never have used the cloth if diapers were as fabulous back then as they are now. Back then, the cloth diapers were actually easier on baby’s skin.
Of course, there’s the environmental impact, and you know how I feel about that. It would be AWESOME to know how many diapers you are keeping from winding up in landfills. And there’s the money it would save. Dolla dolla billz y’all!
But you would have to worry about diaper rash more. If you were hyper-vigilant about changing it, it may not be so bad, but it’s not nearly as moisture-wicking as modern diapers.
Personally, it would have been way tough for me to have used cloth diapers with Jade. I was a new mom and shit was so gross then. I coulda used them with Nate, but I guess the thought just never crossed my mind. By the time I had Nate, puke, pee, poop, and all things that used to be “grody” were just part of my normal routine. Go fer it!
As you know from my blog, I cloth diaper.
If what I read above is correct, you are saying cloth diapers now cause rashes?
I have had less rashes using cloth diapers than disposables. I used disposables for the first 7-8 months and times after. I changed just as often as I did with disposables but I ended up with less rashes to treat.
I found that pampers with dry max made my son break out in an extreme rash.
Huggies would burn his skin if he pooped in them
and Luvs wouldnt hold pee very long.
I have never heard cloth diapers now-a-days cause rashes? May I ask where you heard that? I am curious to who would say something like that as you said you havn’t used cloth diapers.
Cloth diapers were more about saving money for me. I kept buying Luvs because they didnt cause a rash as much as the others but I couldn’t afford $20 + a week on diapers and it was annoying to hear my dad complain money when I asked him to help me.
(I re-read this to myself and it sounds bitchy but in no way shape or form am I meaning to come out in the tone, please don’t take it that way! :] )
Oh no, I didn’t mean cloth diapers now-a-days cause diaper rash any more than cloth diapers back then (in 1980). I just knew my mother said that she used cloth diapers then because disposable diapers were very hard on my sensitive skin, but that cloth diapers caused a rash too, and I assumed it was because they weren’t as absorbent (compared to modern disposables) and thus kept moisture close to the skin.
After getting your comment, though, I asked my mom, “Didn’t you tell me how amazed you were at modern disposables because they were so effective, absorbent, and easy on the skin compared to the cloth diapers you used back in the 80s?” and she said yes. So I asked her about the cloth-diapers-causing-a-rash thing and she told me that they caused an awful rash every time she used “rubber britches” with them (we’re Southern, lol), but that when she didn’t use the rubber covers, you had to be very vigilant about putting them on correctly and changing them frequently, or else you had to worry about leaks and whatnot.
Now I know nothing about what covers are available now, and they could be totally different. As for modern disposables, I used Huggies Supreme with both my kids and they never had a diaper rash at all.
Skin problems aside, though, cloth diapers are better for the environment. That’s a 100% fact, and not one that I take lightly. I think it’s an amazing choice, but MAN I loved the disposables. But wait, you said you used them for the first 7-8 months. That’s pretty reasonable. The main drawback for me was the frequency with which my kids had to be changed. I remember Jade going for days where she would literally need a diaper change every single hour. I couldn’t fathom washing all those, or having to wrap and pin them. But after a kid is 6 or 7 months old the changes would be waaaay less frequent, so that would eliminate a lot of my concern. The “ick” factor for cleaning poop doesn’t even cross my mind. Once you have a kid, you can change a diaper and eat at the same time, if you wanted to. I should have save the money, though. I was always broke (still am), but was able to afford the diapers because I was on WIC with my first kid, so I never bought formula. (No, I didn’t breastfeed after her first week of life – the most miserable week I’ve ever survived, I swear I nearly killed myself. I truly had to get therapy to get through it.)
Maybe I’m making the whole thing a lot more complicated in my mind than it actually is. I know I felt that way about The Keeper before I started using it – that it would be messy, inconvenient, uncomfortable, smelly, etc… it wound up being waaaay more convenient than tampons. So hell, tell Kibbies all about how easy and rad it is to use cloth!!
(Your comment didn’t sound bitchy! And if it did, I’d still have responded with grace – most of us who discuss stuff on this site are women and we can get fiercely bitchy sometimes but we love each other all the same. Thanks for contributing!)
From what I’ve seen cloth diapers have evolved TREMENDOUSLY. I, too, wore rubber britches. LOL
Like the Keeper (which I STILL want), modern cloth diapers are a hefty investment. (Or they seem that way to me anyway.) They seem to range in price from $15-40ish for ONE f’ing diaper (or just a cover). They vary SO much too, I have a LOT to learn about them. It’s very confusing. I wish I could go in a store and play with them. A test baby would be especially helpful since I haven’t changed more than a couple of diapers since I was 10 years old. I guess child labor laws may prevent stores from having a live test baby. LOL, my brain is ridiculous.
Anyway, cloth diapers are insane now. Some have disposable inserts. Some are made of super-all-natural organic hemp or something. Some have velcro & some have metal snaps. There are lots of funky awesome colors and patterns. Weather permitting, if I use these, my kid will NEVER wear pants, because his/her butt will be too damn cute to cover up.
WHOA!! I can’t imagine how that would save money! I guess I did spend… hell, I dunno… $80 a month or so on disposables? So let’s say you bought the low-end ones, for $15 a pop. That means you can get 5 for one month’s worth of disposables. I don’t know about y’all, but I’d want at least 10 of them. At least. If money were no object, I’d want 30. (I don’t like washing clothes, but I guess those need to be washed immediately anyway.) And then I guess you better hand-wash so that you don’t have to run the washer so often. That seems like a lot of work. And that’s with no covers, eh? I dunno, man. But Ashley says she used them to save money, so maybe she can help you find an affordable brand and give you tips. I’m so glad she commented on here, because I can’t help you out in this area! I’m SO GLAD MY KIDS ARE OUT OF DIAPERS, OMG! lol
I feel certain that if I do use cloth diapers, I will supplement with disposables, especially when we’re away from home. Or I may just supplement disposables with a few cloth diapers, for when we’re at home and changing wouldn’t me a hassle. Since they’re so expensive, I’ll probably just put maybe 3 on a baby registry, and hopefully someone will buy me them & we can experiment.
Let’s see… if you buy 10 of the low-end cloth diapers at $15 each, that’s $150. If you spent $80 a month on disposables, the cloth diapers would pay for themselves in less than 2 months. So yeah, I do think it’d be worthwhile. If we like the cloth diapers enough to buy more, we may just slowly build up a stock of them, like maybe buy one or two a month. (A great deal of them are designed to grow with your baby, so you don’t have to buy new sizes. I should have mentioned that last comment.)
I have wanted to try cloth diapers out. I just feel a little overwhelmed deciding, which makes me put it off. Another thing is daycare. They won’t use cloth diapers at daycare. I suppose I could use them exclusively at home, but I would still have to buy disposables for daycare. Maybe it’s the wrong attitude, but I don’t see the point of me buying a few cloths to use at home and disposables for daycare. I really am an all or none kind of person, I suppose.
Easiest thing to do is find a test trial for cloth diapers. They send you 1 kind of each type of diaper (snaps, velcro, one size, fitted, prefolds, covers) and you pay $100-150. Very cheap and you send back what you dont want or if you want them all, you just keep them.
I personally like the one size pocket diapers. They last from 5lbs-40lbs and I can put 1 insert in for at home or 2 inserts in for when we are out and need added absorbency (or nighttime)
No one uses pins anymore! Most of the time they just put the prefold in the cover and snap or velcro it on.
Personally I love GroVia. They are a hybrid diaper. You can use a snap in insert or a flushable insert. I use prefolds for day use and flushable inserts for when I am out or for nighttime. You can use 2 covers a day so it saves you tons of laundry time. I would recommend GroVia hybrid diapers to anyone wanting to get started.
Also, Raisin Girl, you may have gotten a rash because those rubber britches (aka rubber pants) were not breathable, therefore your skin got irritated because the ammonia stayed on your skin. I dont know anyone who uses rubber pants anymore! Everything is made from PUL (Poly Urethane Laminate)
Before I make your whole comment thing a cloth diaper chat, I’ll stop LOL!
If anyone has any questions just go to my blog and leave me a comment with your email!
P.S I love your blog Raisin Girl :]