Our Bandwagon.

I recently heard the statement, "Don't get on any one bandwagon."  It was actually the pastor of the church the hubs and I attend, in reference to versions of the Bible.  Either way, the statement got me thinking today, Ona's nine month birthday.  I was thinking about parenting and all the different choices parents make (or don't make) for their little loves.  It made me think about all the choices we have made for our baby girl.  There are so many ways to skin a cat raise a kid, I just thought I would shed a little light on what we do and what has and hasn't been great for us.

What we do [things that work for us]:

We cloth diaper.  We use Bum Genius Elementals.  We like them, lately they have been giving us a little fit of ammonia smells, but we read up on using (a)Dawn [as in the dish soap] (b)bleach (c)vinegar.  The combo has seemed to work.

We breastfeed.  If you would have asked me nine months ago if I would still be breastfeeding, I would have said h-e-double hockey sticks no.  It was really, super, cry multiple times a day, hard for me and Ona to jive, but we've made it.  Ona is about ready to give it up [which I am okay with].  I have had a blog post rummaging around in my head about it all, so more description on why it is a "we" is being saved for a future post.

We make our own baby food.  We read the book, Baby Led Weaning and we follow it loosely.  We think the idea is great and Ona has been feeding herself since six months.  We do, however, also make her more "baby" food that we also feed to her.  I ordered two books from Amazon, Top 100 Baby Purees and The Best Homemade Baby Food on the Planet, which we also follow loosely.  Are you sensing a trend?  She eats pretty much everything from dates to strawberries, with the exception of cottage cheese.  She abhors it, but then again so does her mom.  We started Ona off on an on demand schedule [basically whenever she wanted to eat, she could].  She has since settled into an extremely predictable schedule of four breast feedings a day + three meals.

We vaccinate.  

We practice self-soothe.  This one was super hard for me, but Kerry always gave Ona the ten minute rule.  If after ten minutes she was still crying, we would go comfort her.  I think we may have only gone to get her once, the rest of the time she calmed down and was sleeping within ten minutes.

We are simplistic when it comes to toys and baby things.  Ona has one bag of toys.  It's not that we think toys are bad, it's just that when she finds everything else [aka: the pattern  on the rug] more intriguing, we didn't think tons of toys were necessary.  Her favorite toys are a funky ball, a rattle, a little elephant, and the balls from a different elephant toy.  We have one plastic bib that we use, wash, and reuse three times a day.  We have one rubber ducky and a set of bath letters for bath time.  I guess our theory is that your house doesn't have to be overrun with baby stuff.  She does have a swing [great for naps] and a jumper [she spends at least an hour a day in it].  Maybe that will change once we have a toddler, but we're hoping not.

What we've tried [things that haven't worked for us]:

The baby snuggler bath tub.  It isn't that it didn't work for us, as it did for a while. However, as soon as Ona was big  enough and strong enough, she wiggled her way out of it.  We thought it was going to be useful for much longer than it was.

Medela bottles.  In short, Ona hated them.  The nipples were so long that she choked on them when she was a bitty baby.  After some research, we landed on Playtex Drop-Ins.
  
Pacifiers.  After our trouble with breastfeeding, we didn't introduce a pacifier until Ona was six weeks old.  At that point, she was so like, "There is no milk at the end of this, no thanks."

Regular baby wipes.  Call Ona's hiney sensitive, but it can't handle anything but Pampers Sensitive.

Cloth bibs.  We were gifted a few cloth bibs.  I am a once a week laundry type of gal.  That meant that bibs that were worn on Monday were not washed until the following Sunday.  In other words, a recipe for moldy cloth bibs.  Yuck.  That's why we went with our one plastic, rinse-able one.

These are the parenting choices that have worked with our family.  My guess is that they will evolve as Ona grows and changes, and I'll bet all of these will need to be tweaked when baby number two comes along someday.  It's the beauty of parenting, there is no one set of directions.  All this to say, I am going to try super hard not to jump on any one bandwagon when it comes to parenting.  These are just a few things that we've jumped on with our first babes, but our feet are certainly not set in concrete.

What are your parenting bandwagons?  Any other babies abhor cottage cheese?