Yep, we bought more diapers ourselves, and are in the process of winding down our relationship with the diaper delivery service.

That may be a bit contentious though. Now we'll be washing our diapers ourselves which may be more wasteful of water, but we're doing our best to minimize that, and we're saving a delivery truck from coming here once a week for the next year or more, so it felt like the thing to do.

We recently were in the hospital, having our first (and best) baby boy Gaelen. We were in a double room but until the last day we were there it was just us and the bed next to us was empty.

On our last day they brought in a new mother fresh out of the labour and delivery room. I dont' know how young she was, but she sure looked it. I can only imagine how overwhelming that would be. The baby's father was there too, but only stayed for a few minutes, and then she was alone with her new baby.

A quick "congratulations" seemed to cheer her up a bit, which felt nice, and hopefully helped her feel a bit better.

Its so easy these days to go with disposable diapers, they are cheap, small, super absorbent, etc.

But they're filling up our landfills with stuff that won't decompose, and wasting valuable resources.

So we're trying out cloth diapers. That's how everybody did it before disposables were invented anyways, right?! Right now we're trying out a diaper service which drops off a bunch of clean ones every week, and picks up the dirty ones. There are other benefits to doing it this way, I think the biggest being in reduction of energy and water usage in the cleaning of them.

We may not stick with that method forever though, we bought a couple hemp diapers of our own that we will try out and see how they are for Gaelen (our baby).

The only downside we're finding with not flushing your pee is that the toilet needs cleaning a bit more frequently....but hey, there's a new upside for us too, it's quieter so in the middle of the night we won't wake our new baby up with a flushing toilet! And that is worth more than anything to us right now ;-)

Diane was one of many nurses we had in our three days in the hospital after giving birth to baby Gaelen. They were all nice and helpful, but she was by far the standout. She made Margot feel very comfortable and happy, like we were doing the right thing, and that was worth its weight in gold during a time when everything is new and you don't know if anything is the right thing.

To Diane:

Thanks for everything during our stay, you made our lives happer, and baby Gaelens first few hours more enjoyable as well. Best of luck with the green renovations you're doing on your house!

 

I have to admit I'm pretty proud of myself for this. We had only been home with baby Gaelen for a few hours, but needed to get some groceries. It's only a short walk which is great (no driving!!). In my haze of lack of sleep I still managed to bring the bags and give them to the cashier. The key I think is to keep them sitting right next to the front door.