Warning warning - diaper content below

I decided to write about experience so far with toilet training.  As I try to keep this blog as poop free as possible I did it over at my cloth diaper blog.  

Honestly there were highlights

This post is part of the Carnival of Maternity Leave over at Strocel.com. Visit for more posts on maternity leave from August 3- 15th.

I re-read my post on the Highlights and lowlights of mat leave. And I realized it was really just about the lowlights or lessons learnt. I certainly had some bleak moments in that year, and I obviously needed to get some of that out and into the ethernet. But there were lots of good times too.


1 - mat leave top up


My organization topped up my mat leave for 17 weeks. This was very helpful financially and one of the reasons my husband was able to take 5 weeks off when the little man was born. I married a younger man not as far along in his career. So the loss of my income for a year was daunting. The top-up really helped us out.

2 - exercise helps


On the day I went into labour I had to call my pilates studio and cancel my lesson for that night. And just days before I had been dancing at a friend's place (hubbie and I swing dance). So as soon as the Doctor said it was okay I was back to my exercise. The little man and I took Salsa Babies every Friday. And hubbie did bedtime routine on Wednesday's so I could go to pilates. This little break each week did wonders for my spirit and my body.


3 - time off to travel


We took 3 weeks in the spring to travel to Germany to visit relatives. It was a bit tough financially (the top-up helped), but felt it was the best time to go when I was on mat leave and before the little guy started to walk. It was a fantastic break from the daily routine. And we had so much fun as a family treking around with the little man in his ergo carrier.


4 - finding my groove


With over 15 years in my career I'm used to making fast decisions based on past experience. When you are a new mom you have all sorts of conflicting advice coming from all directions. Books tell you to do things this way, Omi tells you another. It takes a while to figure out your parenting style, the one that works for you, your hubbie and your child. For us getting the sleep sorted was like the foundation to our parenting house. After that we had (a) some sleep and (b) some routine, so we were able to think more clearly through the rest.


5 - cloth diapers


Some may think that I'm grasping here noting cloth diapers as a highlight. But it really was. We started with a service and the intention to CD part time. And we were surprised by how much we both LOVED it. Yup it took a bit more work. And yup it took a bit to get settled into a routine. But in the end it fits perfectly into our parenting style and we are happy to do our bit for the planet.


The best part of all


And of course the best part of my mat leave was my little man. My very active, very head strong, very determined, eating, sleeping, running, talking, laughing little man (who is currently tugging on my shirt to turn his stuffed transformer back into a robot). Going to go give him a hug!!

What I learned on vacation

We just returned from a vacation to visit the out-laws in Alberta - vacation included camping (car camping in a tent for us, trailers for most of the rest of the family) and then some stampeding in Calgary. We've done long trips with the little guy before, but this was the first long car trip now that he is a full fledged toddler.

Lessons learned:

• Your heart can stop for just an instant when you see an Elk standing on the shoulder at dusk. And then it pumps twice as hard once it starts again.


• MUST always bring bro-in-law who owns a coffee roastery camping. He made the most heavenly coffee everyday. I'm not a coffee drinker, but I couldn't wait for the coffee to be ready everyday. He tried out different beans on us each day, and on the darker roast days I did add a bit of bailey's. But there is nothing like a great bean, ground right, brewed right and sipped under in a lawn chair outside your tent. (coffee company is Fratello if you want to try it out).


• Good idea to bring a generator just in case the battery in your trailer runs out. Or to grind coffee everyday.


• You can eat very well when camping... can anyone say eggs benny for breakfast.


• The environmental thinking campers who brought their own plates do more dishes than the red neck Albertans who use paper.


• The girls can ROCK at poker. Out of 12 players, last 2 standing were women. Last one standing = ME!!!!!!


• The toddler will pick the 'best' possible day to launch his first escape out of his sleep tent and then the pack n'play.


• You can never bring enough toys.


• The bath water in the large rubbermaid bin can be used for a foot bath after the kids have had their bath.


• Always keep at least one toy hidden for the return trip home - no matter how bored your child gets it will always be worse 6 hours into a 12 hour drive home. Keep it hidden.


• You can do cloth diapers while camping. Just be sure to launder at the camp or town laundromat during a quiet period (and remember your laundry line, thankfully for me my father-in-law had some extra rope).


• No matter how cold it is at the camp site it is always HOT HOT HOT at Dinosaur Provincial Park.


• Rockets are still fun at any age. So are remote controlled planes - unless you crash it into a tree.
• It is possible for a 22 month (who hasn't pooped in 2 days) to clog a low flow toilet. So much for water conservation when you have to flush it a thousand times and plunge.


• Your 22 month old CAN stay focused for 2 hours at the Calgary Stampede Parade.


• Omi does in fact make the best muffins.


• If you plan your driving around your toddler's normal sleep times, he will sleep when he damn well pleases. So plan your drive home around your own schedule. Toddler still does what he wants, but we got a great lunch in Field, BC at Truffle Pigs.


• No matter how long you've been driving, the craziest hour driving with a toddler is the hour before dinner.


• I forgot how cool and scary those Alberta thunder/hail storms could be.

But the best lesson of all is that you can survive a vacation with your in-laws, and actually have a little bit of fun (and yes my in-laws do read my blog and yes I still kiss-up).

influencing and changing behavior - a case in cloth diapers

A few weeks ago I attended a BCAMA breakfast to hear Jim Nelson, Senior Manager of Marketing from BC Hydro speak. Jim oversees the PowerSmart brand and I found his presentation on changing and influencing behavior through social marketing very interesting. Several weeks later it is still resonating with me, in particular making me think how I came to be a cloth diaper advocate.

I can easily be described as a city girl. I started in advertising in Toronto in the early 90s when Melrose Place was the 'best' example of my profession. No my skirts were never that short, no I didn't switch from an account person to a writer to an art director in a single episode and no I never tried to drown anyone in the pool in the center of my apartment complex. But I did live a hard working, fun living, disposable lifestyle. That changed somewhat after I moved to Vancouver. But I was still very focused on my work and my social life. When I met my husband I was travelling a lot for work, dropped my laundry off at the laundromat to be cleaned, dried and folded for me and I had a cleaning lady twice a month. Not the type of person you'd expect to get excited about her diapers drying on the clothes line in the backyard.

So what happened? How was I influenced to change? Certainly mainstream media had an effect on my thinking about my disposable lifestyle. It always really bugged me that diapers live pretty much forever in our land fills. And while the cloth diaper movement is growing is it certainly not mainstream and there are no large marketers pushing their virtues. This is a case of social change through word of mouth.

At the breakfast session Jim gave us a little exercise to discuss amongst your table a behaviour you'd like to change - discuss the excuses you'd give not to change, actual reasons not the change and the reasons to change. (and he reminded us that real and perceived issues were equally valid)

Well the excuses not to try is pretty obvious - the fear of poo and the need to stay as far away from it as possible. Some valid reasons for not trying them is the upfront cost of buying them, the extra steps required when your baby is wiggling away on the diaper table and the extra laundry (and the additional hydro cost that goes with that). The reasons to try are primarily environmental, but also cost.

So I was commited to the idea that I would try cloth diapering part time. Use them at home and then switch to disposable when out and about. It seemed like a nice little step to try and reduce the amount of diapers I would send to the landfill.

I was one of the last of my friends to have kids, so I asked my friends. The reactions were

• "hahahahahahaha I give it a week"
• "you are a better woman than me"
• "I tried it but my husband wasn't on board so I gave it up"
• "there were too many extra steps - diapers, snaps, liners, covers - so we gave it up".

So word of mouth was certainly NOT influencing me to change my behavior. But I had one good friend who was cloth diapering - she had three kids so I figured if she could do it the least I could do it give it a try. So we took the advice of a colleague and started with a diaper service.

Then it was like we fell into a rabbit hole - of the marketing kind. Cloth diapering itself was easy. Figuring out the shopping process was NOT. My friend with the 3 kids (who lives in Toronto by the way) was my life line to all things cloth diapering. Cloth diapering seem to be a great business opportunity for Work at Home Moms (WAHM). And the internet is just stuffed FULL of diaper options. But I spends hours and hours and hours reviewing websites and scouring diaperpin.com to read reviews. No wonder people don't want to change and try something different... it is overwhelming. More overwhelming than buying a stroller!

The diaper service was great advice as it gave me a few months to get used to my little man and his diapering needs and then buy a couple of samples to see what worked for him and us. I then bought the diapers we liked on craigslist (the good diapers like mother-ease really hold their value and I expect I'll be able to resell them when we are finished with them OR give them to a friend).

In the end, we found the times when we used disposable diapers we had more messes and that resulted in more laundry than washing diapers. So we became full time cloth diaper parents. And somewhere along the line I've become pretty passionate about it. I've posted reviews on diaperpin.com, I've passionately advocated to poor pregnant women wondering what it is all about, I've purchased wet bags (btw the best are from http://www.thegoodmama.com/ - expensive but worth it) so I can travel with cloth diapers and I obsess about those 6 disposable diapers a week that get used on my son while he is in daycare.

So how did I get here from those Melrose Place days????? Word of mouth worked against me, there were no negative consequences or social pressure, I knew no advocates..... I guess it just came down to my belief that the social norm was NOT acceptable to me and the help of ONE good friend.

So what no... well I'm trying to do my darnest to influence other people's behaviour by advocating my experience. It only took one friend to help me change. And it really it isn't that hard - once you get over the intial shopping experience. Now if we could just convince a large marketer that money could be made here then we'd have a lot more power behind our cloth diaper revolution.