Long, Busy Day (with doctors! and daycares! and dinner!)

[same_sky]

M and I took today off work in order to get some real-life workday baby stuff done. Namely, I had a doctor appointment (34 weeks tomorrow, btw) and then we had plans to visit some daycares, and then my parents were coming by on their way back from a funeral in the more-western part of the state. I wanted to go to this funeral, but it was three hours from here and I had things scheduled... but mainly, I just didn't want to be three hours away from the hospital at this point. I might go to visit family one more time (two hours) before the baby is born but that's about my limit, I think. The funeral was for a man who used to work with my dad when we lived away. That sounds inadequate as a description--we traveled around together with a group of people for all those years, and we were always away from our family/friends so we spent a lot of time together. I was a construction brat as opposed to a military brat. :)

Doctor
We met a new doctor today, and we now only have one more to go and then we'll have met them all. He was totally unconcerned with the anemia topic. As a matter of fact, he was not terribly concerned with anything other than how very Swedish M is. Kidding. Sorta. He really was interested--the first thing he asked about when he walked in was the name and where we were from. He was thinking of Magnus Samuelson, the guy who won the world's strongest man competition a few times. He did do the doctor thing appropriately as well, though. Anyway, he basically said that different doctors interpret the numbers differently, and he wouldn't have said anything much about my results, so it's not dangerously low or anything. Heartbeat was good, and he poked at my swollen legs and told me to lay off the bad carbs and drink plenty of water. There was also a trace of protein in the urine, so here's hoping that was a fluke. Didn't you want to read all about my urine? They measured my belly and it was right on target. Most astonishingly of all, we were out of there in half an hour, total, including waiting times. That has basically never happened.

Daycare
Since we got out of the doctor so early, we went to Choice B daycare first, and had a look around. I don't mean to imply that it was BAD, but there were a few things about it that we didn't care for. First of all, it was complete chaos. I have honestly never been in a daycare in my life until this morning, but the impression we got was that the building was too small for that many kids. It seemed kind of like a people factory--somewhat impersonal and a bit junky. The biggest complaint we had was that the front doors were open. We walked right in, and there were kids in there. It was pretty close to the road--what's going to stop a kid from running outside, or a stranger from coming in to snatch a baby? We left there and went to lunch, and afterwards, we headed over to Choice A daycare, which is the one just by our house. We arrived during naptime, and the infant teacher took us around the whole place and explained more things than we had any idea we should know about. The woman can talk, let's just say that. The experience was extremely positive. First of all, they keep their doors locked pretty much all day, and you have to talk to an intercom to get in. I liked that a lot. There are only five babies at a time there, and forty kids in total. They've never had anyone ask about cloth diapers, but the teacher just said, "hey, I'll give it a try if you want and we'll see how it goes." We left and returned home to get ready for our next errand (shopping) and decided to go ahead and reserve our slot, since three of five slots were already filled for this fall. The deposit was just $25. I figure that is extremely reasonable. If, for some reason, we decide not to go there (can't really imagine us choosing anywhere else since this one turned out to be so positive) ... that's not much money to lose.. but daycares with infant slots are a bit of a rarity. Anyway, we stopped back in to hand over our money fifteen minutes later, and the director had already heard all about our conversation, and she brought up the cloth diapers again. She basically said the same thing, but added that she did need to check with the state daycare regulation thingie to make sure that there were no restrictions on doing it. That is perfectly fine--I mean, I want them to adhere to state regulations! Also, I don't think there will be a problem... that helps. So, we have a daycare, and they were excited about us coming there--I think it helps that we bought the parsonage. (This also means that we already paid the equivalent of our weekly fee eleven hundred times or something to the church already--or twenty years of daycare services. Cripes, that's a lot of money.) And we were invited to church. ;)

Dinner
Then my parents came down, and I backed out on cooking dinner (which is why we had gone shopping) and we went out for Mexican. (Bearno's-equivalent.) I hate picking the restaurant because no matter what, someone isn't happy and then I feel guilty. My mom is really picky about certain things. They always make me choose, though, and will never give me anything at all.. even stuff like "not fast food" or "cheap". For once, both of my parents really enjoyed their meal, though, and my mom suggested that it was actually better than our gold-star standard of Mexican food in our hometown. Wow! Or, maybe she was just humoring me because I am hugely pregnant and sick and miserable. It was really good, though. And for once, I didn't have to feel bad about choosing the restaurant poorly.

Comments

[carrieb.livejournal.com]

I was laughing so hard when you mentioned Magnus and the strongman. My screen saver is a slide show so pictures of our trip to Beckley come up and my mom wanted to know who "that tall guy" was with Mike. I said Magnus and she totally equated that with the strong guy, guy. Then she said if we had a daughter we could name her Magnus. ?????

cloth diapers and childcare

[parilous.livejournal.com]

My aunt used to be the Director for a childcare center in Arlington County, VA. They had to use disposable diapers at the center, though I don't recall why. So, the one child with cloth diapers just had to wear disposables during the day, then her parents switched her back to cloth at night.

I forget -- is the reason for you using cloth diapers enviornmental? The reason I ask is because a friend of mine read a book that suggested that cloth diapers are not a problem in our landfills. She wrote:

I got most of the way through Rubbish on the trip to the conference. I had no idea that paper didn't actually break down in landfills, or that it makes up 40% of the volume in landfills. I'll be getting plastic bags at the grocery store from now on. Disposable diapers, which have come under attack by environmentalists, take up about 1% of the volume. The book also gives a nice perspective on the amount of sewage produced by diaper services (often used by environmentally-conscious parents). I'm going to send my copy to my parents. They used cloth diapers on me and disposable ones on my siblings. They changed over because day care requires disposable ones. After switching for day care, my parents never changed back. My mom expressed regret when telling me about that because of "the landfill problem." I think she'll feel better knowing that diapers are as much of an issue as disposable toothpicks.

On the other hand, if it's more about the environmental cost of MAKING the diapers, then that's never been disputed. They are environmentally-costly to make and financially-costly when you buy them! :-)

(I was raised on cloth diapers because I was allergic to whatever they used in Pampers (in the 70s). I have similar irritations when I wear certain kinds of sanitary pads nowadays. My mom had to use cloth diapers with my youngest sister because she showed the same type of skin irritations when she was in disposables (Luvs). Both of us were potty trained earlier than our siblings -- at around 20 months -- and I'm not sure that's a coincidence!)

If worse came to worst, maybe you could use disposables at childcare and cloth diapers at home/ on weekends? That child care center sounded fantastic. My aunt would say that the single most important thing when choosing a child care is how comfortable YOU feel about the place. If it looks like a place YOU'D like to stay for a while, then that's the place for you.

[parilous.livejournal.com]

Oh, here is an article written by the Rubbish guy:

http://www.forester.net/mw_0209_beyond.html

Re: cloth diapers and childcare

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

The main reason we're doing cloth diapers is because of the health issues with disposables. Namely, there is a link between male infertility and disposable diapers--it's not a definite thing, but it seems related. Since we are a couple with infertility problems, it seemed.. kind of unethical to not even give it a try (even though Ducky turned out to be a girl.) There's also the fact that there is dioxin in disposables (bad bad bad) and all sorts of other nasty chemicals. The stuff that draws moisture away from the skin also draws moisture out of the skin, and that increases diaper rashes and sensitivities.

Other big reasons are financial, environmental and personal. By personal, I mean that after putting so much thought into it for all these months, it has occured to me that I wouldn't want to wear paper underwear myself, so I hate to put it on my kid. I break out when I have paper on my skin, so I am afraid she will too.

As far as the environmental thing, though.. thanks for the link. It's an interesting subject, but I still have a bit of a hard time buying the argument that it's not better for the environment. I'm not saying that they don't make some valid points, but they tend to have some very skewed ideas about the CD world in these articles, so it's like comparing apples and oranges. It's hard to explain the flaws in the comparisons without all of the links to back it up, which I haven't saved.. and yes, some of them have to do with the production of the diapers and the actual laundering costs. When it comes right down to it, diapering your kid isn't all that environmentally responsible no matter how you do it, but I still think that it's better with cloth than without... but it's not The Big Issue for me so it doesn't matter too much whether I'm wrong or not. I should write more about this sometime, with actual facts and all, but I am fundamentally a lazy person so I probably will never get around to it. ;)

I've known all along that daycares weren't likely to be accomodating on the cloth diaper issue, so it was mainly a pleasant surprise that they were willing to try it. The first place was a flat-out no, with condescension thrown in for free. The reason I don't think there will actually be a state regulation issue is that there are plenty of people in the CD communities online (there are way more than you'd think!) have their kids in daycares with cloth diapers. It just depends on finding one who's willing to agree to it (and in most cases, I suspect that it's finding one who doesn't have the old-style of diapers in mind.) The absolute best part is that I think if they are immediately willing to agree to give it a try, they are likely to be flexible in other areas as well. I imagine we'll use disposables occasionally, but not being forced to at daycare would be great.

And no, it's not a coincidence, according to the online diaper world... but it doesn't work for all kids or anything. I am hoping it works for ours. ;)

Fun comment. ;)

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

I don't think that Magnus is the BEST name for a little girl, no. *giggle*

[courtesy.livejournal.com]

You're almost there, this is so exciting, even though I know it's probably going slowly for you. But those swollen ankles will be gone soon! Sure you'll have cracked sore nipples instead but hey the ankles will be better and ducky will be here, hooray! :)