35 Weeks and 1 Day
Well, the weeks until Aiden is born are winding down quickly. We are wrapping up all of our preparations as quickly as we can in the off chance he decides to come early. There are just a few more things that we need and a few more crafts and little things to do in the nursery to finish up.
For those of you who don’t know, Brandon and I have decided to go the route of cloth diapers. I read up on them and found that not only are they cost efficient (they can be re-used over and over for multiple children, whereas if you buy disposable diapers you need at least four $10.00 packages a month for 1 child), they are also economical (not that I buy into that too much but it is nice to know that I won’t be sending piles and piles of diapers to the dump), the cloth allows the little baby bum skin to breath better, thus creating less diaper rash, and lastly, (and I guess that I will see if this actually proves to be true) I read that children who wear cloth diapers potty train earlier. Who doesn’t want that? I do want to add the caveat to all those who would consider baby sitting for me, if you baby sit I will bring Aiden to you in a disposable diaper (with other disposables) so that you do not have to deal with swishing the poo off the cloth diaper and wrapping all the diapers up in a bag to be washed by me later. No worries!
So really I wanted to write about our experience with our car seat. First of all may I highly encourage all future moms to install the car seat 4-5 weeks BEFORE you are due and then take it to be inspected for proper installation. After our last birthing class on Thursday Brandon and I saw a set of new parents putting their car seat in the car. The mom was standing by the car and the husband appeared to be struggling with the car seat. I don’t know about you but if I were the mom I would be frustrated, especially since I know that I will just want to get home and climb into bed as quickly as possible. Our experience installing ours was definitely a little bit more complicated then we anticipated. We followed the directions exactly but found that after our first attempt the base was angled and leaning to the side. So of course we tried a 2nd time, this time the seat belt was too loose and we could move the base around. Well, the third time worked much better because I found that instead of just simply, “pulling on the shoulder strap” like it said in the instructions (which caused the funny angle of our first attempt), that you actually push down on the base, pull up on the part of the buckle in the seat, then pull on the shoulder strap. After all of that is done, you then have to attach a little locking clip 1/2 inch from the locking part of the seat belt. Needless to say, in my little car there is not more then 1 1/2″ of seat belt below the car seat base, so the locking clip (which is like 1 1/4″ tall) is only 1/4″ away from the locking mechanism. The good news is that the car seat is installed at the proper angle and will not slide anywhere. I feel confident that when I get it inspected they will give me a thumbs up.
Related to this was our attempt at installing the shades for the baby. Luckily we had been given vinyl window cling ones because it quickly became apparent that the blinds that open and close would not have worked in my funny shaped rear windows, as it is we will have to cut the vinyl ones to the appropriate size and shape before they will be able to install fully and without wrinkles.
So there you have my experiences for the week. Thanks to everyone who attended my baby showers and sorry to those of you who I neglected (due to pregnancy forgetfulness) to invite. Oh, one last thing. After my last visit to the doctor on Thursday he decided to have me start coming every week. Originally I was to have one more 2 week visit and then come once a week but due to my symptoms (and the closeness that I will be to 36 weeks at my next visit ) he changed it. As of next Friday Aiden is free to come whenever he wants and they will not do anything to stop my labor. WOOT!!!! The light is at the end of the tunnel! Ta ta for now!