Hi all! Did you think I disappeared? Nah… nothing so drastic. I just popped a kid out and that took a bit out of me. Apparently this parenting business is just as hard the second time around as it is the first. Perhaps even harder because toddlers don’t come with a handy off switch. I love my boy, but he has a LOT of energy and also carries around every virus known to humankind. His life goals include simultaneously smothering me with love, running me into the ground, and giving me the flu—all out of love. It’s baffling.

Moving on… for my first blog post pregnancy, I decided to write about something happy, empowering, and downright awesome. I hope you enjoy it. 😉

Some days as a parent, even as a second time around parent, I feel like a complete newb. When that small creature shrieks for what feels like hours on end while I grasp frantically for solutions, it is disheartening. Then suddenly, the clouds part, something goes right and I think… oh yeah, I’ve got this. No problem.

Let’s talk about that parenting win today. The past three months, it has been a bit chilly in our apartment. Not exactly sweater temperatures, but nothing I would want a naked baby subjected to for long periods of time. Consequently, our new arrival has been diapered and dressed almost all of the time (showers and baths excluded). This does not leave many opportunities for airing out “down there” if you get my drift. So, what is a mom to do when a rash starts to develop and creams and oils just don’t cut it? Naked booty time. That’s right, the kid needed some diaper free time to relax around the apartment. Thankfully, the sun is now shining high (most days) in the Swedish sky (from before 6am until after 9pm…) so the apartment is quite a bit warmer during the day.

Unfortunately, we do not have a washer and dryer in our apartment and I have an aversion to washing linens more than once a week. Exceptions are made if it cannot be avoided, but I do everything I can to avoid it. The hubs even carries our sleeping 4 year old to the toilet each night to ensure there is no wet bedding in the morning. As many of you know, babies pee at their leisure and seem unaffected by such small details as dirtying the linens. In fact, something about a bit of fresh air almost ensures bladder release.

As Plato said (though probably not in English), “Necessity is the mother of invention”. My extreme desire to avoid doing a 7th load of laundry each week brought me to the kind of super mom “AHA” moment that I had previously only dreamt about… PIDDLE PADS! Also known as puppy training pads, pee pads, and urine absorption pads. That’s right, I decided to lay my kid on a puppy pad. Some of you are jumping up and down thinking, “why didn’t I think of that???” Still others think I am a complete and total jerk to my kid. That’s cool, to each his or her own. I feel like a genius.

How did this little experiment go? Swimmingly 😃 Thanks to my lovely aunt, I am the proud owner of a 7 pack of piddle pads and after 3 naked baby sessions, my little one has yet to actually pee outside of her diaper. Clearly she is attempting to lull me into a false sense of security… My only regret is that we bought relatively small piddle pads. In the future, I will probably purchase the extra large ones to guarantee more room for the wee one to roll around. If I’m going to do it, I might as well do it right.

So, for you parents out there suffering the dilemma of either doing an extra load of laundry or keeping your baby in diapers, give this a try. Let me know how it goes 😉

Until next time…