Heartbeats

Today, at my wife's prenatal doctor visit, we heard our baby's heartbeat for the very first time.  It was about 160 beats per minute.  Today was also the day of the Boston Marathon, and there were 2 bombs that exploded at the finish line, stopping several heartbeats, and probably increasing the heart rates of the runners who already had elevated heart rates due to the miles that they had just run.

My wife and I are both runners.  We've each done two half marathons, and several shorter races.  In fact, one of the first purchases we made for our yet-to-be-born baby was a jogging stroller so that we can take him or her out with us for runs when he or she is old enough.  We are hoping to share our love for the outdoors and physical exercise with our child whose heartbeat we heard today.  Neither my wife nor I are elite runners; women in our age group qualify to participate in Boston if they can run 26.2 miles in 3 hours and 35 minutes or less.  We are not part of the Boston community, and yet as runners, we are a part of that community.  It may sound strange to those who don't run, but runners share a common bond over the miles we run, the challenges we choose to take on, and the dedication we put into such an individual sport.  And because of this, I feel a connection to those runners and race spectators in Boston today.

It is a very strange juxtaposition to hear our child's heartbeat for the first time on a day when some of the best members of our running community were threatened and injured by bombings.  I am overjoyed and deeply disturbed at the same time.  It makes me worry about the kind of world our little one will grow up in. I know that bad things have happened all throughout history, and that this really is nothing new.  It just feels a lot more personal this time.

That's Not Soup!

Today, I cooked for several hours and I have no food to show for it.

I do, however, have a large stack of prefold diapers that are ready to go!  Prefold diapers are plain, cloth diapers, and when they are new, they are not very soft or absorbent.  So, you have to wash them 5-6 times in hot water.  Or, you can boil them, which is what I chose to do.  Boiling seemed like a better idea than multiple washes because it uses less water and less energy.

This is what a stack of 10, new, cotton diapers looks like right out of the package.  They are mostly flat, not so soft, and really too large to put on a baby.  We have a total of 60 diapers in both newborn size and regular size.  I don't know what a "regular" size baby is, but apparently that size applies to any baby that is no longer a newborn.  Regular is also a funny word to use when talking about diapers, but only because it makes me think of people on laxative commercials since I have a juvenile sense of humor.

I generally only get out the huge canning pot in late summer/early autumn when we are taking in tomatoes, beans, and other produce from the backyard by the basket full.  But today, it came in handy to boil about 10 diapers at a time.  I filled the canner with water, and set it boiling.  Once it was going pretty good, I added the diapers and boiled each batch for 30 minutes.  All in all, I boiled diapers on the stove for about 4 hours today.  Our dog, Bonny, sat diligently in front of the stove hoping I might give her a taste of what was cooking.  We kept telling her, "that's not soup!"  But, she didn't believe us.  In her mind, there was no way someone would spend that much time in front of the stove on a day off of work if they weren't cooking up something delicious.  We ate leftover pasta from the night before as the diapers continued to boil.  And boil.  And boil.



When the diapers were done cooking, I moved them to the washing machine to wash once in hot water and then tumble dry.  After the entire process was through, the diapers were much softer and fluffier than before. They had also shrunk down to the appropriate size, and they grew in thickness.  Here are the same 10 diapers pictured above, now having been boiled and washed.

Diapers are pretty expensive, cloth included.  I've read that the average baby goes through about 2,200 diapers per year, and that it's parents spend $1,500-$2,000 on diapers each year.  And that's just diapers, not wipes or anything else!  We spent $130 on enough cloth diapers to get our baby from birth through potty training thanks to a lady we met on Craig's List who had a great supply of cloth diapers that she had never used.  We think that cloth diapers are a great idea due to the money we will save, the comfort factor for our baby, and the lower impact on our environment.

Next up . . . dying the diapers in all the colors of the rainbow!