Prevent Diaper Rash

And now for something completely different...

This one doesn't even fit in with my blog. Well, sort of does. It helps people. It is a green idea. But I didn't do any research for this. My kids have long grown out of diapers, but I am writing this for you, if you're here from a Google search, because I don't think my method is common knowledge, and if I can save just one baby from getting diaper rash, then all the hours I've spent on this blog over the years are worth it.

Forget diaper rash creams, diaper wipes, vaseline, whatever. Here is how to prevent diaper rash.

1. If your baby has peed: Remove diaper. Put on new diaper. That's it. You're done. Put the baby down.
2. If your baby has pooed: Remove diaper. Rinse your baby's bum under the tap with warm water. DO NOT USE SOAP. Pat dry with clean cloth. I use small cloths I bought in bulk from Walmart (see the picture above). Put on new diaper.
3. When your baby has a bath, then you are free to use whatever baby soap you normally use.
4. Learn the signs of when they're having a poop: child concentrating or whatever your child does, so you can change their diaper right away after a poo.

How did I come up with this?

My eldest had diaper rash. Once. We were on vacation and my parents-in-law were watching her. They did not notice she had pooped. When I am taking care of her, I notice right away. In fact, I could always tell exactly when she was pooping. She would look like she was concentrating and pause whatever she was doing. And then the smell. But it seems grandparents have no sense of smell, nor do they notice anything.

So she must have been in her dirty diaper for some time when I discovered it. That was when she got her one and only case of diaper rash. What a nightmare it was... she would scream every time we tried to clean her behind. Can you imagine putting water on an open sore? I would cry every time I had to change her diaper when she had the rash. It didn't last long. I had her with no diaper on until it healed.

My second child never had diaper rash. Never.

What I did differently with the second is that I did not rinse her bum off when she peed, only when she pooed. And I also did not use soap, except when bathing her. I did not use diaper creams, Vaseline, or whatever. The idea behind this is to toughen up her skin naturally. It worked so well that she never once had diaper rash, saving me from buying expensive creams, diaper wipes, and tears.

Please don't use diaper wipes. Environmentally unfriendly, and not kind to baby's bottom. Use them only when you know you will not have access to a tap with warm water. Having two children, I bought a total of two boxes of wipes, and only finished one of them.

Does it matter what kind of diapers you use? I experimented with cloth diapers, but most of the time I used disposables. I used Huggies for daytime and Pampers for nighttime, since the Huggies caught poo better, and the Pampers absorbed better at night.

For that matter, we used the bare minimum for diapers too. I toilet trained them at the ages of 22 and 25 months. It only took 3 days for them to learn, using my method, modified from the extensive research I did. And they night trained themselves. But that'll be another blog post, depending on the response for this one.

Running with the Kids

Summertime... and the livin' is easy. The perfect opportunity to spring a running program on my kids! Bwahahaha!

Some of the more skeptical of you are thinking, running? My kids would hate that. But surprise surprise, my kids loved it, although I did hear some whining at the first session. Very quickly their fitness improved and these pseudo family walk/runs became fun. Or maybe that had to do with the fact that we follow up each session with a walk to the mall for dinner.

Last summer I did the same program with the kids, a Learn to Run 10K. Or at least, I tried to do it. We managed about 8 sessions before September rolled around, then by coincidence, there was a 5K Run for the Cure and the kids were more than ready for it. They ran almost the whole way.

The kids did well at the 5K run. Well, at least my 5 year old did well. The 7 year old ran out of steam at the 3K mark when she realized her little sister was a better runner, and did an "I refuse to look like I'm trying" move. She had be coaxed to continue, and it was not a matter of being tired, but a matter of feeling like she was in control. This is how I read it, anyway. The end of the run was in a drizzle of rain.

This time around, both kids are loving the sessions, especially the youngest. I am not planning to have them eventually run 10K, which I think is too far for little kids. More like 5K at the most. Today I had a race with my youngest uphill. She weighs 38 pounds and I weigh 123. Despite my triathlon training, she had me working at 90% and redlining it at the end of the sprint. But I didn't give up, nope. I waited for her to tire out. She would easily outrun most of the adults in my triathlon clinic.

I highly recommend the training program. You start with 1 minute "runs" which are really just a very slow jog at talking pace, followed by a 2 minute walk. You repeat this 8 times. Easy peasy. In no time at all, y'all will be real runners.

SFG: Mistakes, I've Made a Few

Okay, I've made more than a "few" mistakes. I admit it.

Reader iEye commented: "...I actually live in the same area and I'm about to start square foot gardening myself... Considering we are practically neighbors; do you have any concerns, problems, or advice that are more specific to this city and environment?"

Not sure how many of my problems are specific to this local environment. This is more a listing of my regrets. Here is my wisdom, for what it's worth, as a veteran of 2.2 years of SFG in Vancouver. It may be a case of the blind leading the not so blind, but here goes.

Location

If I had to do it all over again, I would definitely choose a better location for the garden. When I moved the garden, I found that the soil was overgrown with a strange root system, very strong and fine roots, that managed to grow up through the landscaping cloth.

I figured out later that it was the tree roots from the neighbour's forest. Somehow the trees managed to find my trove of fertile soil and shot out roots 5m away into my yard and up into my raised bed. The solution is either to get better landscape cloth--mine was quite weak after only two years--and to locate it further away from any nearby trees than you might think necessary. There were no visible above ground roots anywhere near my garden in its first location. I bought the cheapest landscape cloth. This time out I bought professional grade landscape cloth.

Planting Too Late

I tried to follow the advice this year of not planting until after a certain nighttime temperature was held. That was a mistake. Every year I don't plant early enough. This year I planted in mid-May. One of my expert gardening friends planted theirs a good 3-4 weeks before me. Do you think *they* waited for the right nighttime temperatures? NOPE. Their garden is doing much much better as their plants were already very far along before I even planted a single seed. Already my spinach is bolting and looking gangly. I should have planted it much sooner, and planted new plants every two weeks after. Next year I'm planting in April.

Patience: Compost Not Ready

Second point. This year's garden is doing fairly well, but the percentage germination seems to be lower than I remember with my older seeds. The carrots are maybe at 50%. Neither of my kabocha (squash) came up at all. Either the seeds are too old, or maybe the compost was not quite ready yet when I used it. If I did it over again, I would wait at least a few days before planting the seeds, and wet the soil thoroughly. At least that would eliminate the soil as being the problem.

The Grid Material

I originally used thin wood dowels from Kerrisdale lumber for the grid system. It fell apart two years later. I'm now using wild bamboo harvested from my neighbour's invasive bamboo which is growing in my backyard. It's free and it's not likely to fall apart. The wet weather in Vancouver was just too much for the thin wood dowels.

Sharing Seeds

I now have about 10 envelopes of seeds. I bought too many seeds for such a small garden. I should really split the seeds with a fellow vegetable gardener, because even the smallest quantities I bought from Westcoast Seeds are too much. Seeds have a shelf life of a few years at most (some longer) and as they age, fewer will germinate.

Strawberries

This is my third year and finally I was able to harvest a few berries without the animals getting to them first... Containers off the ground are better for strawberries in my "wild" urban backyard in the middle of the city. I'm not sure what is eating my berries, but my guesses are: rats or birds. When I transferred the garden over, I potted some of my strawberry plants and put them in a raised area under netting. So for the first time, some berries coloured and were eaten by me. Unfortunately, the berries are sour and not sweet like store bought, so it is the first instance where what I have grown is not as good as the store. I bought the strawberries from David Hunter Garden Centre, and they are just not doing all that well under my novice care.

Zucchini
This is my first year growing zucchini. The plant is already taking over a substantial amount of real estate and no zucchini yet. I should have planted it in another location, because those big leaves shade so much of my other plants and make those squares useless.

Planning

Okay, well this is not a mistake I made. It's just a great place to share this fantastic planning tool I found at Gardener's Supply Company. This tool allows you to map out what you're planting. Very cool.