Thanks to all the wonderful blogs I've been following the past year or so, I have gone all hippy. Cloth diapering, cloth mama pads, thinking of homeschooling, using slings, breastfeeding baby #2 if I can (and for longer than six months, thank you very much.) It has been so gradual that I hadn't noticed it much. And then I talked to old friends and realized how much I've gone over to the crunchy side!
Number One: Slings. A friend of mine is very pro stroller, and I respect that. I was trying to tell her how awesome slings are and how babywearing is so great for the baby. She just isn't into it. And then she found the warning about bag slings and said for sure no. Not for them. I thought back to when I was pregnant for Ingrid and I'd never even heard of a sling. I spent hours and hours researching strollers, it was an obsession! And then we got a front pack and I never used our stroller anyway...And then we got slings and carriers and I just loved them so much. I loved the feeling of having Ingrid right there, she'd lean back and look at me and smile, I'd kiss her every five steps.
Number Two: Cloth Diapers. I have tried to convince so many people that it's really not that big of a deal! Again, when I was pregnant I thought about using cloth but the upfront costs really made it seem impossible. It wasn't until I started really looking at things that I realized that you can do it pretty cheaply, and you can do it part time, and you can get a stash little by little, you don't have to have all 20 diapers at once. And washing and poop, they are not a big deal. You get used to it. And after spending $600 on disposables, I cringe thinking of how many awesome organic diapers I coulda bought with that money!!
Number Three: Paper products in General. I use cloth pads now. It's just a given that with using cloth diapers I suddenly saw how silly it was to use disposable pads. We also don't use paper napkins--I have cheap washcloths we use, and I just started thrifting some cool old cloth napkins. I used to think they were for fancy dinners, I don't know why it never occured to me to use them every day! We also don't use paper towels, which doesn't seem like a big deal to me. We haven't used them in years. But a maintenance man came to fix our dishwasher and asked for a paper towel. I said we don't use them and he gave me such an incredulous look! But I thought about it and duh, why would you use papaer to soak up a spill? We don't dry ourselves off with paper bath towels do we??
Number Four: Breastfeeding. I did not breastfeed Ingrid. I don't regret it one bit. She grew and grew and she's smart as hell, and she hasn't had a lot of sickness at all. But...for baby #2 I am going to do everything in my power to breastfeed him/her. For one, it's so much better than shelling out $20 for a can of formula that smells and stains everything! And it's easier to stick a boob in the mouth than fumble around for a bottle and measuring the formula at 2 in the morning. And one thing I got defensive about with my friends was extended breastfeeding. I have to admit that when I first saw people nursing their toddlers and tandem nursing, I was freaked out. I just never saw it before. It was weird to me, it was different, and I just didn't get it. But after seeing it around it seems normal to me. Like why not nurse past six months? Why stop it at one year exactly? What's wrong with nursing past what someone deems normal? This was something not one single friend of mine agreed with me on! They all thought it was gross, and the mother being selfish not wanting to give it up. And unneccesary, why not just give the kid "real" milk? I was really quite surprised, as my friends around here in MI nursed their kids as long as they wanted, they never seemed in a hurry to stop, and were actually sad when it did stop. It seems strange to me to just stop it and give a kid cow's milk instead of human breast milk...
So there you go, I'm a crunchy hippy and I am proud of it!! Thank you so much to Sarah and Gina and Sunnymama for showing me a different way of being a parent. It has helped me be the kind of parent I want to be!
A New Path
1 year ago
7 comments:
I'm happy your hippy now lol
I'm really thinking about going the cloth pad route or the diva cup. Do you mind me asking what kind of cloths you use? I haven't done much research on them yet.
Yay for hippy! You can tell I'm hippy, I'm moving to hippy central!
It's so amazing to me how people never consider these things...like your stroller friend...she'll never ever where her baby. *sigh* I used to think that people didn't do thing the natural way because they just didn't KNOW it existed. I won't lie, I used disposables for the first 8 weeks and then I found out how AMAZING cloth diapering is...and what an obsession! But, what about everyone else? Why don't they realize the same things?
I love sunnymama's blog! I'm lucky enough to have some friends (and family members!) in real life who are all "hippy" too, but having the blog community is an awesome add-on.
I've breastfed all my babies past one year, but I haven't ever gotten up the guts to tandem nurse. I love breastfeeding, but find it exhausting, too, and just can't handle the thought of feeding two at once. Although Johnny was SO sad to be weaned, I've questioned that decision a few times... I don't think my mom weaned any of her babies before two - except the first, who weaned herself at some really young age.
LOL bless you, welcome to the fold. ;) I also became a hippy slowly, without realising until pretty far along the way! Now here I am ECing, and tandem nursing a three and a half year old and a nearly one!
Your post made me smile. We are another family who didn't realise we were a bit hippy too, until DH was talking about the kids at work. He said someone was surprised that we used cloth nappies.
After that he went on to ask me if it was that unusual to use cloth nappies and san pro, co-sleep, babywear, extended breast feed, do baby led weaning, etc. It just never occurred to him that we were different!
AAww, What a lovely post. Thank you so much for such kind words too. I often wobble about blogging and wonder if it is ok to post thimgs about my family online. But, if it has been helpful to you, then I'm really glad that I do it!
Love Gina x
I can relate to so much of what you are saying.
Since I started reading blogs (and blogging!) we've ditched paper towels, disposable nursing pads, gotten a few cloth diapers (we are trying to cloth diaper on the weekends when we aren't doing daycare) and while we don't have a sling, we have a baby bjorn and we always use it when we go for walks. We're having breastfeeding struggles with our 7 month old, but I feel determined to keep trying; I really think I would have given up by now without the blogging community, because so many women I personally know just use formula.
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