My Episode with Baby Blues

This photo was taken at the hospital. Little Man is probably 1 or 2 days old here.

I don't think anyone could ever get used to depression, even if they're like me and suffer from depression on and off throughout the week (which for me is due to the brain injury I got in the car wreck a few years ago). Before I had Little Man I had talked to my midwife (who oversaw most of my pregnancy care, but didn't do the delivery) about postpartum depression. I was worried about getting it because I had problems with depression already and I thought I might get really bad Baby Blues... like to the point that I wouldn't want to be around my son. This was a big worry for me before he was born. She said because I deal with depression already it was likely I would get Baby Blues, but how bad they would be is something you really can't pre-determine.

Around 5 weeks after LM was born I suddenly felt like I had been slammed with a black cloud. I knew I was severely depressed, but couldn't figure out why because the few weeks since LM was born I had been doing so much better with my regular depression than usual. I had been happy, I loved spending time with my son, and I felt like over-all life was great. A few days into this depression session though I was starting to worry. Nothing I did would shake the severe sadness, the feeling of not wanting to get out of bed to do anything, not even a shower helped ease this depression!

I think around the 5th day I ended up talking to my mom about what was going on. I told her how I couldn't figure out why I was so depressed, how I was having trouble functioning (eating, sleeping, general stuff I usually did like cleaning house), and that I just felt like a giant black cloud was taking the light out of everything around me. She suggested that it might be Baby Blues and to just keep an eye on it and see how long it lasted. At that point I had completely forgotten about Baby Blues and even at that time I didn't really think that's what it was. Looking back now I'm quite sure that was my Baby Blues. Fortunately I didn't get those feelings of not wanting to be around my child. In this case, being around him actually helped me overcome a lot of the depressive feelings.

I don't really know how long the severe depression went on, but I'm thinking it lasted about a week. I am glad that it's over and that I survived it. There were a lot of random busting into tears for no reason, a lot of laying in bed sleeping/resting (or trying to sleep!), and a lot of eating chocolate and sweets. For some reason I couldn't get enough sugary foods that week either. I ate a ton of brownies (which I made several times because A. they were easy to fix and B. they had less sugar than a lot of other things I could've made). I actually perfected the recipe and added in semi-sweet chocolate chips too which made them really fantastic (if you love chocolate then these brownies are to die for! Hubby likes them but isn't a huge fan of all the chocolate). {Brownie recipe here!} I crave chocolate when I'm severely depressed.

Since that week I've only had the usual occasional depression stuff that I've dealt with for the past two and a half years. Nothing major and certainly nothing I can't handle. That Baby Blues stuff is something completely different though. I don't think I've ever experienced a depression so awful as that. Of course I may not completely remember all the depressed feelings I've had due to my brain injury which makes my memories quite hit and miss, but I'm pretty sure that's the worst depression I've ever had. I am grateful it didn't last long and that it's over now, that part was not a very fun experience!

That's my thoughts and feelings on the Baby Blues. I debated on writing this post, but I thought maybe writing about what I've been going through since having LM would help me remember some of the important things next time around and in the meantime they might help someone else who is going through the same things.

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Our Cat Demi Tom

Demi sleeping on the back of our recliner. One of his favorite spots.

Hubby says that 'Demi Tom' is a silly name, but my sister and I recently started calling him that because we think he looks so much like Tom from the Tom & Jerry cartoons. Not only does he look like Tom, but he acts crazy like him too! I think our cat chases ghosts around our living room. There is literally nothing there and he will run and jump from couch to chair to table to couch without stopping. It's quite entertaining to watch.

This photo is from October. Demi would climb on the bookcase and lay on my stacks of jeans & shirts to sew.

Demi is our only indoor pet now. We had some problems with Emerald and she had to go. Demi has become a completely different cat now that she is gone. He is much more playful and seeks out attention and loves snuggling and being petted. I think he is much more fun now than he was in some of the previous months. (We got him when he was about 6 weeks old and he was a friendly cat then, but at some point he changed and was more stuck up like Emerald vs. the fun playful cat he is now).

After Emerald was gone I was curious to see how Demi would react to the change and what his personality would be like. If he continued to be a stuck up, boring cat I was considering getting rid of him too. Obviously he is now quite entertaining and very much like Tom. I like him much better with his fun personality. Since he has changed for the better we went ahead and got him fixed and had his front claws removed.

Demi likes sitting in the kitchen chairs and he won't move if you go to sit down.
I've literally sat down on him and he doesn't move or make a sound. He is weird!

Getting him fixed was a necessity since he had started to pee in different rooms of our house. It was awful! It smelled musty and at first I wasn't sure where the smell was coming from, but after I caught him marking his territory we quickly made a vet appointment to get that taken care of. I haven't had any problems with him peeing on things now that he's been fixed.

Demi jumped in the laundry basket one day when I was doing laundry. He stayed in there for quite awhile too.

I was torn on whether or not to take out his front claws. Thanks to Emerald's influence in clawing on the ends of the couches he was bad about doing that too. He also kept trying to climb the curtains I had in our room (before the makeover) and in Little Man's room. He had poked a ton of little holes in the sheet and comforter on our bed from where he jumped up on it when he was really little and even now with him being around 8 months old he still got his claws caught up in my sheets. I wanted to get some new sheets, curtains, and a comforter for our new bedroom makeover but didn't want them torn up. This is where the waiting to see how his personality changed came into play. If he was boring I probably would've let him be an outside cat (he was an outside cat when we got him). But because he's not, I decided it would be best to have his claws taken out so for the rest of how ever long he is with us he at least wont be tearing up the furniture and linens.

Both surgery's were done at the same time. He was at the vets for two nights because I had to drop him off the night before his surgery and he had to stay over one night with his claws being done. When he got home he had to use a special type of litter for that first week. It was called Yesterdays News and was basically old newspapers turned into pellets. It was awful stuff (smelly) and I was SO glad when we were able to start using our regular litter again. That first afternoon when he got home he seem a little mad at me. He wouldn't have anything to do with me for several hours (I was the one who took him up to the vet and brought him home), but eventually he came around and now he is back to normal.

Demi's "I've been caught" face. He likes roaming around in the bath tub.
He's even hopped in the shower a few times when the water was running!

Demi took a little time adjusting to not having his claws. He was used to using them to climb on the furniture (not that he needed them to jump on the back of the couch), or play with our feet so the first few days when he would do something and realize his claws weren't there he was confused. He would look around like, "what is going on? why isn't this working like it's supposed to?" Once he adjusted how he jumped on the furniture or played with things he was fine.

I have noticed that since Demi doesn't have his claws he seems to over compensate with his teeth. He doesn't actually bite down, but he does put his teeth on your hand or your foot (which ever he is playing with) so I've had to work with him so he won't do this. I was a little concerned about this habit when he started it up, but he isn't as bad about it now as he was at first. I was mostly concerned because of having Little Man around him, but I don't think I'll have to worry about Demi biting him.

Demi snuggling with LM.

That's another thing to bring up: Demi is great with Little Man! In the beginning he could care less about him, but I think he's figured out that LM is here to stay. Demi usually sniffs his head and walks on, but occasionally he will lay on the play mat with LM or come snuggle on the couch with us. I can't wait to see how they react together when LM gets older.

Sprawled out on the couch. Demi does this quite often.

I swear Demi is part dog. He sniffs EVERYTHING, drinks out of the toilet (also a habit of his I don't like and can't get him to break), tries to lick you, and lays sprawled out on the floor or the couch or the bed. He is the perfect cat for me because I would love a dog, but can't have one right now. Yes he is still a cat and still does mostly cat things, but he also does these odd dog-like things and it makes me laugh.

The Organizer Blessing

Ever since we moved to our home in the country my silverware drawer has been a mess. I had the old organization system in place that I used at the apartment (see our organized Apartment Kitchen here), but the drawer where I keep the silverware in our new house was much bigger so the baskets were always sliding everywhere and my neat stacks of silverware were always falling over. This bugged me for the longest time, but I wasn't really sure what to do about it.

One day I finally figured out that what I needed was some no-slip drawer liner. Being the forgetful person I am, I didn't write it down on my shopping list and so a few months went by and I still had messy drawers.

A friend of mine was getting rid of some things she didn't need any more, and you will never guess what was in that bag! That's right, no-slip drawer liner!!! I had completely forgotten about wanting to buy some. At the time when it was given to me I knew I had wanted to buy it, but couldn't remember what I wanted to use it for (I tend to do this a lot and it's because I have a brain injury which causes me to not remember hardly anything).

About a week ago I was putting away clean silverware when it hit me! This is what I wanted the drawer liner for. Here's what my silverware drawer looked like for well over six months:

Thanks to the no-slip drawer liner and a pair of scissors this is now what my silverware drawer looks like:

So much more organized and the silverware now stays in pretty little stacks like it should! I thought it was really neat how I needed something, forgot about it, and then was blessed to have it given to me. I have another drawer in my kitchen that needs this liner stuff put in it and I will be doing that very soon!

Cloth Diapering | My Thoughts at Two Weeks In

***At the time you are reading this post I've been cloth diapering for over two months. These are my thoughts about cloth diapering when I had just started the process. I will be sharing another post on my thoughts now that I've been doing this awhile, but that's for another time.***

Mid-February marked the first days of cloth diapering for us. In early January I had purchased 10 of the Econobum cloth diaper sets from Walmart.com. They were washed and ready to go before the baby arrived, but I was in no shape to start the cloth diapering adventure then! I was having a hard enough time taking care of basic needs for myself and Little Man right after he was born and with him having the 'black poop of death' (as hubby called it) I didn't think cloth diapering was something we were ready to start. I decided that when I could take care of both myself and LM and be able to keep up with the housework again that I'd give cloth diapering a try.

I originally looked into cloth diapering because I knew our budget each month would be tight and there would be times when we wouldn't be able to afford paper diapers (as my grandma, Great Mary, calls them). I did a fair bit of research into the different styles of cloth diapers and the different brands available. I also looked into making them myself, but wasn't able to afford that option though I probably would've liked it best of all. {You can read more on my research here.}

I settled for the Econobum diapers because they were the style I wanted and were what I could afford to buy. Almost two weeks into using these diapers I have to say that overall they aren't that bad, though there is one thing I really dislike about them: the PUL fabric (which is what makes the diapers mostly water proof aka keeps them from leaking out onto clothes) doesn't cover the front top part where all the snappies are. I didn't know this and the first few times I put the diapers on LM they leaked at the top. I examined the cover and discovered that the top part didn't have the PUL fabric lining it. So now I just make sure to place the cloth diaper insert lower that way it doesn't have the opportunity to leak through the top.

The changing table in Little Man's room.

The Econobum prefold style diaper is wonderful. I can fold all the diaper prefolds ahead of time and have them sitting on the changing table shelf all ready to go. When it's time for a diaper change I pull out the next clean diaper, remove the soiled diaper, and if the cover isn't dirty I give it a quick wipe down with a baby wipe, put the clean diaper in and we're back in business. If the cover is dirty I just grab a new one and put the new prefold in that and we're still good to go (I usually only have to do this if he's pooped a lot and it gets on the inside of the cover). Once I have LM's new diaper on his butt I take the dirty one to the bathtub, wash it off and then put it in a bucket of water (I have a 5gal. bucket half full of water with 1/2 cup baking soda in it sitting in the bathroom in the tub) to soak until the next time I wash diapers.

Washing the diapers isn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I get most of the yucky part done by rinsing them out in the bathtub in our front bathroom (we don't use this tub for anything else, but I do spray it down with bleach water and wash it out any time I rinse out a dirty diaper). Soaking them in the baking soda water in the bucket helps get rid of more of the poop/pee residue that doesn't come out in the quick rinse I give the diapers before they're put in the bucket. I wash the diapers every other day or so (two or three times a week, depending on how much I use cloth diapers that week since we're not strictly cloth diapering). I dump the bucket of water in the tub to drain them, put the diapers back in the bucket and haul them to the washer. I wash them in cold water with 1 cup of my homemade laundry soap {recipe here}, which I love, and then-because I'm still trying to figure out how to completely get rid of the yellow poop stains-I hang the diapers up on hangers to air dry. {Update: check out the post Getting The Stains Out.}

I have to say that I'm glad to be a stay-at-home Mama. Spending all of my day with my Little Man is such a blessing! For the most part I don't mind cloth diapering and think it's a great way to save a little money every month. In January we spent about $30 on diapers for about three weeks worth of diapers. That's about $10 a week (since we had him in the second week of January) so on a guesstimated average if I cloth diaper MOST of the time I'd save at least $35 a month (considering I still buy one package of current size diapers to use when we go out for things like doctors appointments and those run about $6 for Parents Choice from WalMart). I like that we're going to be able to save some money each month by cloth diapering. That's what helps me keep doing it on the hard days when those diapers are really dirty and I don't love washing them out!

My thoughts on using cloth wipes: I have thought about using them and that's just something I can't bring myself to do. I really love opening a package of wipes and having them ready to use and easy to dispose of. I am pretty sure that I won't be changing my mind on this. I'd much rather pay $6 a month for wipes than try to make my own up constantly. For me I'd rather save in the area of diapers (which are much more expensive) than save on wipes.

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Exercise Week 2

It's funny how in just one short week a goal you thought you could maintain doesn't work out so well. I am finding myself at that place right now as I'm writing this update. This past week I've found it difficult to keep up with my exercise routine. My original plan was to use my ab lounge and do my favorite Jane Fonda Aerobics workout video five times a week. I've quickly realized that this isn't a realistic goal for me and so we have our new goal:

I would like to do the Jane Fonda Aerobics workout video at least THREE times each week (my weekly updates run Wednesday to Wednesday). I would still like to use the ab lounge five times  a week since that doesn't take nearly as much time and doesn't put me in a soaking sweat which would require a shower.

Being soaked in sweat after the video workout is one thing I am really disliking. The main reason is because I have to take a shower so that's a good 1 hour every day that I'm spending working out and showering. Not that I don't want to workout, its the showering that's bugging me.  That and my body isn't used to working so hard so I have some super sore leg & butt muscles that need a break inbetween workouts.

{photo via 30 Day Fitness Challenges}

I was talking to one of my sisters and she told me she wanted to do one of those 30-Day-Challenge workouts on Pinterest. She and a friend were going to work through it together. I asked her what you had to do for it and she said all you have to do is a certain amount of squats every day. I was like, "oh I can do that!" So I will be joining them on that for the next 30 days. We got through the first three days of the challenge this week!

Workout Info for Week 2

Wednesday, April 2: nothing.

Thursday, April 3: nothing.

Friday, April 4: nothing.

Saturday, April 5: nothing.

Sunday, April 6: Jane Fonda Aerobics video, 2 sets of 20 on ab lounge.

Monday, April 7: 50 squats.

Tuesday, April 8: 55 squats. 2/20 ab lounge, JF Aerobics video.

Wednesday, April 9: 60 squats, 2/20 ab lounge

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