Okay, I have finally made it to 36 weeks.  Just two more weeks until I am considered full-term!  And probably four or five weeks until I give birth.  It seems so close now.  Oh wait, that’s because it is close.

I have noticed that I am a lot moodier, which is probably due to a combination of factors:

1.) Not enough sleep.  Last night I was up until 11:30 with heartburn, but then I slept well until 7:15.  I only got up once to pee and fell right back asleep.  Also, tiring extra quickly.

2.) I think that the acyclovir makes me feel a bit out of sorts.  If I take it on an empty stomach I get a little nauseous.

3.) End of pregnancy hormones.  I have been extra weepy lately, and a little out of it – sort of disoriented, often having a feeling like I’ve forgotten something, not reacting sharply to situations that take actual thought.  It’s like the pregnancy brain fog I’ve been having has suddenly stepped up a bit.  On Saturday morning I spent like an hour weeping into the pillow for no reason.  Yay!

Kelly and I got a lot done, baby-wise, this weekend.  On Thursday after work we went to Diaper Lab and bought 10 newborn cloth diapers, some diaper covers (2 Thirsties X-Sm and 2 Happy Heinies X-Sm pocket diapers), 2 snappis, a roll of diaper liners, 12 flannel and 3 hemp cloth wipes, 2 pail liners, and 2 wet bags.  We wanted more newborn cloth diapers, but she was out of Green Mountain brand, and the alternate brand (All Together) hasn’t come in yet.   All Together doesn’t seem as soft and I wish we could have all Green Mountain brand, but on the other hand I have very little desire to spend an entire day in the laundromat washing and drying a load of diapers 8 times.  We also special ordered some Dappi diaper covers and Happy Heiny changing pads.

Yesterday we moved the other floor-to-ceiling shelves into the hallway and cleared out the corner for the baby.  He hauled the chair next to his side of the bed into the living room so I could take pictures of it and post the pair on craigslist.  We also moved the incredibly crappy chest of drawers out of the front room closet and into our bedroom for baby stuff.  I wiped all the drawers out, but I am going to try covering the bottoms with contact paper tonight.  We got this chest of drawers for free, and it was worth exactly what we paid.  It will be useful for the few weeks we are in Somerville with a baby, though.

Kelly also did some loads of baby laundry with a baby-friendly laundry soap, Ecos Free & Clear Liquid Laundry Detergent, purchased at our local Whole Foods.  Unlike All Free & Clear, which we currently use for laundry, Ecos has no additives or residues (such as optical brighteners).  Ecos is recommended for washing diapers.  We got the pleasure of going over all the cute outfits we received at our various showers and from Glenda and Alex.  Yay baby mittens!

The next step after getting all the baby clothes into the drawers will be cleaning the pile of clothes and junk off my chair and getting it out of the room and then setting up the bassinet (no, we haven’t done that yet).  We also really need to get the bags of books to sell and the bags of clothes to give away out of the house – they take up a LOT of space in the hallway.  The money the books generate will be poured back into baby and moving costs.  Some of the t-shirts we had planned to give away I rescued so I can cut them up into baby wipes.  I wish I had that sewing machine so I could serge the edges.  I found this awesome site about sewing your own diapers, but I am not sure that I am that motivated!

Kelly and I also prepared for baby in another way: we’ve received the advice to go to movies now, while we still can, so we went to see Hulk on the Fourth of July.  It was pretty good, except that the emotional climax of the film took place before the obligatory big-cgi-fight-scene climax, and the latter was waaay too long.  I really enjoyed the story, though.  Good characterization by Edward Norton and Bill Hurt, and actual chemistry between Liv Tyler and Norton (amazing since Liv never seems to have chemistry with anyone).  I’m really looking forward to the Batman movie coming out.  We’ve also been renting a lot of films, and two I highly recommend are Lone Star by John Sayles and Blame it on Fidel! by Julie Gavras.  Both really, really good examples of complex storytelling.  Of course, there’s been a lot of chaff as well.

We also got to hang with friends this weekend: Kelly at the Esplanade for fireworks on the 4th, and both of us on Saturday for an awesome game of Dungeon and Dragons at Summer’s house.  That was the most fun gaming I have had in a long time – not boring at all, and it made me want to do it again soon.

I got in a big argument with Kelly Saturday night though about whether we are living up to our vow to be hospitable, something we both take very seriously.  I’ve been so concerned lately with being at home and getting it all ready for the baby that I haven’t paid much attention to his desire to be social – and in the local group of friends maximum sociability comes with playing host to a party.  Not that we could have hosted the game (we just don’t have a table big enough), but we could have hosted the after-party and then offered a place for Josh and Casey to sleep over.  Or alternately, I could have personally opted out but not told Kelly he needed to be home by 10:30 so we could get a full night’s sleep and have the energy to work on the house the next day.  Sometimes my needs seem so loud to me that I forget that Kelly has needs too, and his priorities may not line up exactly with mine.  Or that even when our priorities do match, the way that we choose to fulfill them may differ.  Anyway, after talking it out we both felt a lot better.  We even had hot make-up sex the next day!

Current pregnancy fear: that the baby is in a side-lying position and will not turn head-down before the birth.  (They still move around a lot, so there doesn’t seem to be a big reason for concern.  I don’t feel that the baby is stuck, for instance.)

Current pregnancy excitement: after some focused nipple stimulation, I can get a large drop of colostrum out of each of my nipples.  The taps are on!

Ugh, I am so tired. I have been averaging about 6 1/2 hours of sleep a night, which is not quite enough. I need more like a minimum of 7 to 7 1/2 hours.

More thoughts on diapers…

I was trying to figure out when the cost would even out between cloth and disposable diapers. You know, like Tax Freedom Day (the first day of the year in which the nation as a whole has theoretically earned enough income to fund its annual tax burden). There should be a way to figure it out with a line graph tracking money spent over time on either cloth or disposables. I think that if we used a laundromat for the life of our diapering, it would obviously take longer to reach the point of intersection. On the other hand, we are def. going to move into an apartment with a washer/dryer hookup and will probably have to buy a used washer and dryer, so add in another $300 or so. On the other other hand, we will then use that washer and dryer for more clothes than just diapers, so the cost can’t be completely calculated as a “diaper cost.” I’ll try to keep track of our diapering costs as we go along so I can figure it out. I also think that the real cost of disposable diapers to us would not be as cheap as some estimates online because we would be using the chlorine free, more-natural diapers and wipes, which run more expensive than the big-name brands.

Here is my guesstimate, though:

So, I guess that it really is cheaper to cloth diaper. Huh! That’s a big savings over time. I’m actually surprised. I thought that disposable diapers would be more competitive.

Oh, boy, DIAPERS. People warned me about this. (This means you, Glenda!) To cloth or not to cloth; that is the question. And the answer is, cloth diapers are better in many ways but maybe not as great as advertised. They are definitively better for the environment – studies showing that disposables and cloth are equally bad for the environment have been funded by disposable diaper companies. Good articles on the benefits and history of cloth diapering are here and here. Unbleached diapers – whether cloth or disposable – are better for babies’ bottoms because of the dioxin (this is the same deal as with menstrual pads). Disposables can be more convenient because they are all in one piece (the absorbent cloth, fastener, and waterproof cover) which is quicker and easier to change, they do not require a large initial investment, and they do not require extra loads of laundry (although they do require extra loads of garbage). On the other hand, cloth diapers can be more convenient in the long term – after your sizable initial investment, you only pay laundry costs so cloth diapering ends up much cheaper overall, children in cloth diapers potty train from six months to years earlier than children in disposables (Pampers just came out with a diaper that fits 5-year-olds), and depending on your diaper system the convenience can rival disposables (they make all-in-one cloth diapers now that you can just velcro on, basically a cloth version of a disposable diaper).

What people told me is, don’t feel guilt about doing disposable (subtext: everybody does it). This is true – fewer than 1 in 10 households use cloth diapers, and many cities no longer have cloth diapering services (including Rochester, unfortunately). Not only that, but unlike in the 1980s – when cloth diapering was a symbol of the environmentally conscious – nowadays they are more likely to get you mocked.

So, what have I learned? That initial cost is daunting, especially for the more convenient systems. It’s about $250 for the initial outlay of cloth diapering accessories: a diaper pail, 2 washable pail liners, 2 washable wet bags for dirty diapers on-the-go, a small supply of diaper fasteners, a few washable changing pads, a large supply of washable baby wipes, a sprayer hose that hooks to the toilet to spray down poopy diapers (as opposed to the old method of dunking and flushing with a good grip on the diaper), and a roll of flushable diaper liners.

Contrast that with the initial outlay for disposable diapers: a diaper pail, garbage bags, bulk disposable baby wipes, and a few washable changing pads, totaling around $100.

Then there are the diapers and covers themselves. You need about 12 a day to start, so if I figure on washing every 3 days or so, that’s 36-48 diapers. If you get all-cotton diapers you also need a waterproof cover to go over the diaper and some cloth inserts to stick in the diaper at night, when babies go longer between changes. If you get all-cotton diapers, you also have an initial cost to prepare the diaper – you must wash and dry all your diapers 3-10 times so they quilt up and get fluffy and soft, and so all of the oils in the unbleached cotton are removed (oils reduce absorbency). The cost of 48 newborn cloth diapers, 8 covers, and the laundry at our local laundromat for 6 wash-dry cycles of 24 diapers at a time is $150, enough to last around 6-8 weeks. We’d probably pay the same amount again twice more as our baby grew.

Contrast that with the initial outlay for disposable diapers: bulk newborn chlorine-free diapers for $56, enough to last around 1 1/2 weeks.

Of course, that’s the cheap cloth option – for more convenience you can pay much more. But even the cheap option has a more significant outlay, a total of $400 as opposed to $156.

As another cloth option that is more convenient, say we got pocket diapers (similar in convenience to disposables) instead and decided to do laundry every 2 days. We’d need 24 diapers plus inserts, which is $400 as a package deal online. After the newborn size, you can buy a pocket diaper that is “one size” and fits from about 10 pounds through potty training (35+ pounds). If we got 24 of those plus inserts, that would be about $500, $900 total for the cloth diapers for one child. Or we could mix and match – do the cheap newborn option and then do the pocket diapers, for a total of $650. That seems to make the most sense to me.

In conclusion, I can see how cloth diapering would be much cheaper over the long run, but it is still crazy how much diapers cost. A perfect gift, for those going to Molly’s shower, would be a one-size pocket diaper, which run about $20 each. Any brand is good because I would like to try a variety. Somerville is lucky enough to have the Diaper Lab (right across the street from our apartment), where you can go see the diaper before you buy. The in-store prices are comparable to what I have found online. Diaper inserts are often sold separately, and would make another great gift. (As a side note, I have been warned to stay away from the all-in-one or AIO diaper because they take forever to dry – pocket diapers, once stuffed with inserts, work the same way but don’t take as much time to dry).

Too Much Information, huh.