Post Punk Kitchen Forum

i suspect that Will has a yeast infection... little red bumps all under his diaper, front and back. i've been using the earth mama angel baby bottom balm on it all week, because i thought it was a little diaper rash. i'm going to call our doc tomorrow and see was he says, but the office is closed for the day. any suggestions on something natural i can use?

i was going to say something similar. our sitter had been in contact with a someone who had confirmed pertussis, and i panicked. the doc said that you don't have to worry about friend of a friend infecting your baby, so unless you've been around someone who has it his chances seem unlikely. also, since this was when will was maybe 3 months old, he had only one round of the vaccine and again the doc said he would have built up SOME antibodies. two of the three should put him at pretty good chance of resisting it. best of luck!
oh, and have you googled a pertussis cough to listen to it? it is pretty unique.

About the yeast rash: if it's sunny where you are, take him outside with no diaper on. The combo of the sun and air circulation is great for killing yeasties. The Emperor used to get yeast pretty often!

I ended up deciding not to take him in today. I think I was just having mom-panic last night. He has a grizzly cold and is teething, but honestly he's still in a pretty good mood, acting like himself, etc, and no fever. Solipsistnation reminded me that doctors do exist in Oregon and if things develop there, we will be near medical help.

The Emperor tends to be very physical with everyone he meets and I'm not joking when I say he literally licks his brother/rubs his face on him all the time. The only really amazing part of this is that it took M six months to catch anything from him!

We're enjoying a little diaper-free sunbathing right now... Will even sprayed Chad with a nice shower!

So, apparently infants - both male and female - can get mastitis? I say this because I took Charlie (6 mo. old) to the doctor because one of his nipples is a bit red, and clearly has a lump. Our pediatrician explained that my hormones can cause nodules/clogged duct type thingies in their breasts, which can get infected (basically, mastitis). She gave me a course of antibiotics which I filled but am not giving yet because he doesn't seem to have any other symptoms, so it could be plugged but not infected. Also, he's 19 pounds 6 ounces. This is more than Lucy weighed at her 2-year appointment. My back thanks me for having a ginormous baby.

We have seriously never once had to change Malka's diaper in the middle of the night, even when she was a newborn (we got some good advice from an LC to not change a non-poopy diaper overnight unless baby's actively complaining - don't get out of bed if you don't have to!). She has never pooped overnight and she's been in disposables that keep her comfortable through the night. All of a sudden her nighttime peeing has increased dramatically and she is soaking through her diaper and wetting the bed in the early morning, almost every night. Do any of you have to change almost-toddlers in the middle of the night? Do you have a strategy? Are you able to keep them asleep when changing or do you wait till they wake up and complain (she doesn't complain about being wet, so it would be at her bottle-feeding time I guess)? I'm a little bit thinking of not changing her before her bedtime, but waiting a couple hours and changing her when I come to bed so she might sleep through it. Thoughts?

I can change L in the middle of the night without waking her, and I do if she is wet. We do a prefold no cover, so its easy to tell if she is soaked...

I don't have an almost toddler, but we use one size up for overnight.

So we never had to change the Emperor overnight once he got past pooping (so like 8 weeks), even as a toddler.

The Magician, on the other hand, pees so forking much. I have discovered that disposables almost always leak on him overnight... It seems like he tends to pee a ton at once and the disposable can't absorb it fast enough or something. For whatever reason, doesn't happen with the cloth we use for bedtimes (a huge toddler prefold doubled over plus a cover). Though that combo is absolutely saturated in the morning.

Anyway, my trick for it is to change him in complete darkness in bed. With E I kept a tiny press-on work light next to the bed for this purpose but now I don't need it. Since there's no poop I just whip the old one off and pop a new one on and try to get the whole thing done as silently and quickly as possible.

So last night we decided to change her during her first feeding and guess what! SHE DIDN'T WAKE UP FOR A SECOND FEEDING. So maybe her second feeding has really been an "I'm uncomfortable please change me" wake up? Even though she'll drink 6 oz. at that feeding? She was totally fine with me changing her while she took her bottle. My husband vetoed changing her while she slept when we came to bed and this solution seemed to work pretty well. We don't turn on the lights when we feed her at night ever.

Leela is so friendly, and has never really gone through a separation anxiety phase so far. We had one day when she was clingy that turned out to be teething. Today she was crawling over to people, smiling and waving up a storm and going to hold hands with all these random people.

I think I may be going through separation anxiety because I hate her touching random people. But more seriously, when does separation anxiety happen?

A lot of the time it hits right around a year. Every baby is different though.

Oh and I took the twins to the park the other day (they're 16 months) and one of them started waving at this older man sitting on the bench, and he was very nice and waved back and told me that he had kids, and she was so excited that she came right up to him and reached up like she wanted him to pick her up so she could sit in his lap. Of course he didn't do what she was requesting, but I'm glad she's so friendly!

With the Emperor, it pretty much never happened. He still doesn't really have a concept of stranger danger (at almost 3). Sometimes it makes me crazy because *I* don't want to talk to every other single random person we see anywhere ever, but I feel like overall it's a good quality for a person to have so I try not to discourage it. If that makes sense.

The Magician seems to have been born with the stranger danger. It's so funny because I am SO much more willing to pass him to other people to hold onto and stuff than I was with E... but he is NOT into it. When people flirt with him like at the grocery store, a lot of times he *bursts into tears*. Oooooh em gee was I not prepared for this after the Emperor. I'm all tied in knots today because I'm leaving him with a babysitter for the first time tomorrow while I go to my grad classes and I'm terrified it is going to go really really badly.

What did y'all do at your child's one year checkup? They don't really do well-baby checkups here, which I find very strange, but our GP is quite kind so I'm hoping I can make an appt and have her give Freya a once over. I'm particularly interested in a blood test regarding iron and lead....I think they do that at a year in the US? Planning to ask to about D levels, if they agreed to a blood test, since we've been supplementing. What else should I ask about?

We're having ours in two weeks - my guess is - weight/height/head circumference, giving them the once over to check development, watching for developmental milestones in sight/hearing/talking/movement/responsiveness, vaccines, iron/lead (lead I think depends on area you live in). Maybe that's it?

Mostly well-baby visits seem to be about vaccines, growth charting, and checking developmental milestones and body development (checking joint movement, strength, stuff like that) and then checking in with parents about challenges and questions.

What are the best + cheapest pregnancy tests? I don't know what to buy.

Kate- http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002Y ... hs_product are the cheapest pregnancy tests. If you need LH testing strips, you can alternatively buy a combo pack http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002Y ... hs_product. These strips worked great for me. Got a positive test 10 DPO and all the previous tests in the 18 months of trying were negative. So I had 0 false positives and very early positive detection. Cheap and effective.

Yes to the Wondfo cheapie Amazon strips-- I used both the OPK and HcG strips while trying to get pregnant with the Emperor.

If you don't have time to wait for the strips to come in the mail, I highly recommend the Dollar Tree tests.

False positives are VERY VERY unlikely regardless of what you go with. See www.peeonastick.com for info on that (and everything you ever wanted to know about home pregnancy tests).

Yes, Dollar Tree! They're actually $1 and are the exact same tests that are used at clinics like Planned Parenthood. They're very sensitive.

Want me to send you some? I have 18 Wondfo tests that I'm not going to use before their expiration date (August 2013). They showed a very faint positive for me at 9 DPO when I got pregnant with twins. PM me your address if you do!

That would be wonderful, thank you! PM sent.

Leela has been fighting sleep and didn't go down until about 11:30pm. Then she woke up screaming in pain at 2:30 and again at 5:30. She was rolling from side to side, screaming until I finally nursed her down to sleep again. Is that a sign of an ear infection?

She has been teething, and so has been extra clingy and fussy, but was good all day Saturday and now is really suffering.

Could be. Did you give her some pain meds? Tzipi had a pretty bad night too... She's getting her 2 year molars on the top right now. We dosed her with tylenol and she finally passed out at 10.

When your baby goes down for a nap, and wakes up unhappy looking for boobing, do you have a limit on how many times you will boob them?

Generally L wakes up after a nap and doesn't go back to sleep, but she has been down (with boob breaks) since 3. Am I screwing up her schedule letting her sleep so long?

I hate being woken at 2 am by a baby looking to party....