A Tiny Baby’s Big Impact: Part 2

A lot has changed since having a baby (see Part 1 here), but our lifestyles have also taken a double whammy by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Here’s how both a baby and a highly contagious virus have changed our lives.

Spending a lot of time inside…

Ordering

We are still doing some online orders when we need stuff, but I have been using curbside pickup more. It is also a reason to get me out of the house! Target Drive Up is also really great.

Our grocery shopping is still 100% online. We get our produce and meats from a local grocer here, called Local Foods. They are still completely closed to customers and do everything by delivery and pickup. Other basics and staples get delivered as well.

K used to love grocery shopping in person, so I am not sure if he would have stuck with delivery for so long if there wasn’t a pandemic, but it was definitely helpful in those first few weeks at home with a newborn.

The super annoying part of all these deliveries is the packaging. The basics and staples get delivered in plastic bags every time, despite a note on our account asking for paper bags. Thankfully Local Foods always uses them!

This means my bag of plastic bags gets full very fast. Just last week I finally took the last 4 months of plastic packaging I have collected and brought it to Target to recycle. I had to make two trips into the store because 1.) I could not carry them all and 2.) I did not want to look like a crazy person.

We have similar issues with ordering takeout. A gracious family member gifted us a Grubhub gift card to help keep us fed in the first few weeks of newborn life. We have been using it to support local restaurants in the area, but pretty much every order we get includes plastic silverware and napkins and things we specifically requested not to include.

Self Care

Pre-baby and pre-pregnancy, I would shave with a safety razor, but since I barely have time to shower lately, I have gone back to using disposable razors for efficiency reasons. I hope one day, when I can devote a bit more time to myself, to go back to it.

While gyms and exercise studios were closed for a while, they have opened back up, but we don’t plan to partake in any inside exercising. Unfortunately, the yoga studio I frequented for prenatal yoga was unable to sustain itself after going virtual and has closed. So for now, I mainly focus on getting in a good stroller walk during the day and the occasional yoga video. I may venture and try an outdoor yoga class if I can find the time.

Taking a walk on our shared street, which gives neighborhoods more space to walk, bike, and run during COVID. 

Back before we got married, I started getting monthly massages to deal with headaches and it was wonderful. I kept it up through pregnancy, switching to a massage therapist who was certified in prenatal massage. They closed sometime in March and opened back up in July. I did go back once because my neck and back were so sore from breastfeeding and picking up and holding the baby. It was nice and they had what seemed like good COVID precautions in place, but I was pretty uneasy the entire time being in an enclosed room with someone, even if we both were wearing masks. So I have put a hold on my membership for the time being and will have to survive without my monthly treat for now.

Working from Home

For at least the rest of the year, both my husband and I will be working from home because of COVID, not because of the baby. I only had 12 weeks of leave (unpaid mind you), while my husband had 6 weeks (paid). Not going into the office removes our commuting impact, saving us on not having to purchase gas as often, equals less time on the road, and no money spent on parking.

Once I start working again and after my husband has done a few weeks of paternity leave, we made the decision to go with a nanny for a few days a week instead of sending our child to daycare.

Having a nanny, a baby, and two adults in our two-bedroom apartment is a lot of people in a small space. K and I are going to end up co-working in our bedroom to give the nanny space to place and care for our baby in the living room and nursery. He already has an office set up in our bedroom, so we now need to buy another desk for me.

The plan is to get the same desk as his so we have a matching set. I am already thinking about resale value! We have not purchased any office chairs and are currently using our kitchen chairs, which are cushy and do the trick for now.

While we certainly expected life to change once the baby arrived, I don’t think we thought it would look like this! 

 

A Tiny Baby’s Big Impact: Part 1

Our little bundle of joy is almost 3 months old now and we have been deep in the trenches of survival mode.

When in survival mode, sleep-deprived, still self-isolating, and all you want is your kiddo to fall asleep, caring about the waste created from this new human unfortunately gets kinda pushed to the side.

I hate it, but I have to accept it because I currently don’t have the energy not to.

Birth and Recovery

I gave birth in a hospital setting, meaning my kiddo’s arrival was wasteful from the get-go and I have no regrets about that.

As for recovery, I had to use a lot of single-use items such as pads for post-partum bleeding and adult diapers. Speaking of diapers…

Diapers

Obviously, our biggest landfill contributor here is diapers. We are not cloth diapering and using regular old disposables, SHOCKER! I did some research on this before the baby came and there were a lot of factors involved that lead me to go with disposables for the time being:

1. We don’t have a laundry room. While we do have in-unit laundry, we don’t have a good space to keep a bunch of diapers until I do a load of laundry.
2. While there are diaper pick up services in the city, they are quite expensive.
3. Cloth diapers use a large amount of water and electricity in the cleaning process, almost negating the benefit of staying out of the landfill. Learn more.

For about two months, we actually didn’t use any wipes because of a diaper rash issue and instead used little washcloths. It did end up with me having to do a load of laundry a day though, which was not ideal.

Clothing and Toys

As our babe is getting bigger, she is growing out of her clothes quickly! She mostly has been dressed in generously gifted clothes and some hand-me-downs, but soon she will need more as she moves out of the smaller sizes.

I have wanted to focus her wardrobe on secondhand options, but with COVID going on, I haven’t felt safe to go browse secondhand stores like Once Upon a Child. Facebook Marketplace is an option and most people are doing contact-less pickup. I have been browsing for a few items and keeping my eye out for them. There are so many bouncers and swings available. People want them out of their house!

There are some secondhand stores here in Chicago that I cannot wait to frequent when it is OK again like Velveteen Rabbit and the Second Child. And there is also a rental option that I am intrigued by.

Breastfeeding

While breastfeeding may seem like the perfect zero-waste way to feed, it is not so cut and dry zero waste. Yes, in a perfect world, you don’t need bottles, but there are a lot of things you still need even if you are feeding straight from the tap.

For instance, breastfeeding kinda hurts in the beginning, so I bought some soothing gel pads that can go in the freezer or the microwave. You’ll also need nipple cream, nursing pads (I have washable ones, but there are disposable ones), nursing bras, nursing tank tops, nursing shirts.

Sure you can go around this and use some natural methods, or cut up a bra or wear your old shirts and just have your stomach exposed, but right now, for me, the easiest method is best.

Now if you’re a mom who is eventually going back to work, or would like someone else to feed the baby for once, you are going to have to get a breast pump and its not hygienic to share these, so secondhand is not recommended. Pumps have a bunch of parts that need to be replaced and then this is where bottles and bottle parts come in. So we do have bottles, just not as many as if we were exclusively bottle feeding.

Any milk that doesn’t go straight to the baby gets frozen for later and in a single-use plastic bag, which breaks my heart. You can freeze in sterilized glass containers, but we do not have the freezer space for that.

That’s it for now!

 

 

A Secondhand Nursery

One thing I did not want to do once we transformed our guest room into a nursery was buy a whole bunch of new furniture.

The transformation process was pretty slow going because we had to move a ton of stuff out of the guest room to make way for baby.

We utilized Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist to sell a lot of the bigger items including the desk, some lamps, pillows, and other odds and ends. I also paid someone to recycle our mattress and box spring.

As things have left, we were able to start focusing on the items we needed and a lot of the main components of our nursery ended up being secondhand, coming from family members, strangers, flea markets, and online stores.

Here is how we ended up furnishing our nursery with pre-loved items:

The Crib

Our baby’s crib came from my cousin and it was previously another baby’s crib before that! Don’t worry. The issue with using a secondhand cribs is not knowing where the crib came from or if it’s super old with a drop down side. We know where it is from and no drop down side, so we are good to go!

The Dresser/Changing Table

I scoured Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist for a vintage midcentury modern lowboy dresser to use as a changing table. The goal was to find a piece of furniture that could be used as a regular old dresser down the road and not look like a standard changing table. I ended up finding this one on Facebook Marketplace and am so happy with it!

The Rocking Chair

This rocking chair was actually my mom’s and she rocked me in it as a baby. Growing up, the rocking chair was in our computer room and I spent many hours talking on the phone sitting in it. Now I get to rock my own baby in this chair!

Additionally, the original cushion on this chair definitely did not go with the nursery theme, but luckily my mother-in-law was able to reupholster it!

The tallboy dresser behind the rocking chair is also secondhand, but we have had it for a number of years and it was bought on Craigslist. Luckily it matches pretty well!

The Clothes Tree

This kiddie sized clothes tree has also been around the block! It was originally in my mom’s bedroom as a child and eventually was in mine. It has been painted a number of times including yellow, pink, and now grey! It was already grey before we added it to the nursery, so we didn’t have to paint it again!

The Vintage Posters

As for decor, our theme is loosely “vintage science classroom,” and these vintage science posters were the inspiration. I found these at the Grayslake Flea Market and bought them from a retired high school science teacher who taught in the 70’s.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The Vintage Map

The pull down geographical classroom map was the second piece we collected in the theme from the Elkhorn Flea Market. It sat in our closet for a few years just waiting for a baby to come along.

The Vintage Children’s Books and Microscope

To round out the theme, I found some smaller pieces for the tallboy dresser.

The vintage children science books are from the 50’s and 60’s and I found them on Etsy.

Also from Etsy, I picked up a vintage microscope to use as a bookend.

And there you have it! We do have another storage piece of furniture in the room with fabric bins (not pictured) and that came from Facebook Marketplace.

Otherwise, a majority of the rest of the items came from Target including both table lamps, the rug, side table, ottoman pouf and blackout curtains.

Not bad? I think we did a pretty good job of keeping it secondhand. What do you think?

 

What It’s Like Being 7 Months Pregnant During a Global Pandemic

The last couple of weeks have been weird.

Pregnancy itself is weird, but add in a global pandemic of a highly contagious virus and things just get weirder.

Two weeks ago, I was aware of the virus, just slightly concerned, but I went about my daily life with a bit more hand sanitizer and hand washing. Today, I am “social distancing” and working and staying at home pretty much 24/7.

Everything has been canceled. Everything is closed. There is pretty much nowhere to go.

My dad and I practicing social distancing when he dropped off provisions (AKA Cheez-its)

Work 

Working from home for the past 6 days feels like an eternity. Everything is uncomfortable: my dining room chair, the island stool, sitting on the couch typing on my laptop over my belly.

At first, when work events were canceled last week, I was excited because I knew a full day of work and then an evening event was going to completely tucker me out. Now we have no events, no students, no interns. A good 50% of my job has disappeared in a matter of days (while I know other’s entire livelihoods disappeared overnight).

Luckily, my husband and I are both in positions that allow us to work from home, so we are spending A LOT of time together. Whoever said get some one-on-one time in with your spouse before the baby comes surely did not imagine a situation where soon-to-be parents spend 3-10 weeks holed up in their apartment together. Guess we don’t need a babymoon…

Leaving the House

Every day I am trying to get some activity in. On the first day of our full week working at home, K and I did lunchtime yoga together. Then we went for an afternoon walk in the sun on non-busy residential streets and crossed to the other side when someone was headed our way.

Yesterday, I had to go to Walgreens to pick up a necessary prescription. I planned to go right when they opened to avoid any additional people, but that plan backfired. When I got there, there were 4 other people waiting in line (albeit far apart). I panicked. I could go back home and try coming back later, or I could just wait as far away as possible from people and get it over with because I didn’t want to have to hype myself back up to try again. I waited, I got it, I ran out of there.

Within a few days, entry after entry in my calendar was deleted and now all that is left is my prenatal doctor appointments. That’s the only place I plan on going for now: our apartment, out for a walk, the doctor. Nowhere else.

Food and Necessities

K has been watching this situation diligently and had an inkling we might have to stay home for a while about 2 weeks before all of the mass hysteria set in. We did a grocery shop then and got the staples we needed (including toilet paper and disinfectant spray).

Trying to shop since has been challenging. Not wanting to risk going into the grocery store, we tried a grocery pick up last week and were met with probably only half of the items we had originally ordered. We are waiting a little longer to try again. Otherwise, we absolutely have enough food to not be hangry all the time, except I eat a lot of the snacks.

The Reality

I am not so much worried about myself catching the virus, it is also super possible I or my husband have already had it. We are more worried about others, such as our parents, grandparents, and friends with underlying health issues.

I am concerned about the next two-ish months before the baby comes and the next few months after. My baby shower is most likely going to be canceled, I am not sure if we will get to take maternity photos, and my hospital has postponed all birth classes until the middle of April. It’s also a very high possibility that our families won’t get to attend the birth at the hospital.

When everything seems to be so uncertain, the only thing I can control right now is getting the baby’s nursery ready, so I have been doing that. It is better than scrolling through social media (which I have limited my time on to 10 minutes a day via Google’s Digital Wellbeing settings).

We tried to set rules that we can’t talk about coronavirus news on Wednesdays and the weekend. We failed miserably. So much is changing so quickly.

Overall, I am just sad.

Sad to be missing out on many of the things first-time mamas get to experience.

Sad my mother doesn’t get to see my belly grow with her first grandchild in the last few weeks.

Sad to be confined to our 2 bedroom apartment 3 months before we have a baby and come June, are confined at home in a different way.

Sad we probably won’t have visitors to meet our bundle of joy for who knows how long.

These are my own selfish things to be sad about related to being pregnant at this time, and I am not trying to downplay all of the hundreds of other sad things about this pandemic. There is so much more pain and suffering more legitimate than me complaining about not having a baby shower.

We will get through it. While there is so much uncertainty, there is one thing I know, and that is this baby is coming. No matter what.

I can live without maternity photos. I can find birth classes online. I can celebrate with friends and family when it’s safe to have more than 10 people in a room again.

It will be different from how I pictured it, that’s for sure, but the safety of friends and family and people I don’t even know is more important.